Only Embers: 100 Themes of Damon & Elena
by the killing lights
Summary: 100 separate one-shots tailored to satisfy the secret or, not so secret? Damon/Elena 'shipper in all of us. Some are sweet, some are angsty, but all revolve around the D/E pairing. Rated T for potty mouthed vampires. Read and review!
1. Disclaimer

**INTRODUCTION TO 100 THEMES / DISCLAIMER**

Thank you for taking the time to read! I know, it's crappy to have to go through the red tape, but I'll make it short. For starters, I do not own anything here. Not the 100 Themes idea, not The Vampire Diaries, not any of it. If there are original characters, they are mine, but aside from that, I'm just an author. Now that we've effectively settled that…

This 'story' will be a series of 100 drabbles. Some may be based a bit more in the book series than in the show, and others will be more like the television series, but all will take place under the impression that Stefan continued with his original plan of leaving, as he had voiced a desire to in the show. All stories will have a Damon/Elena theme, whether it shows them together or separate, and all will be, for the most part, unrelated. Please read and review! I'd be very appreciative.


	2. Break Away

**THEME ONE: **_**BREAK AWAY**_

Her nimble fingers unlatched the necklace and she allowed the chain to slide directly through them. The locket itself was beautiful, a tiny and dainty display of gold working. Small flowers decorated the outside, while inside the oval shaped locket lay a tiny spring of vervain, the herb that protected her mind from both Stefan and Damon, and the last thing she wanted to think about at the moment. She looked at the necklace dangling between her fingers, though she did so with unseeing eyes. Days, moments, or even seconds prior, she would have sworn that taking it off and putting it away would have caused her physical pain, but now that she was actually ridding herself of the necklace, she was filled with only a strange acceptance. After all, it had been his choice to go; she had pleaded with him to stay, to figure out another way of accomplishing his mission for her safety, and he had refused.

He had wanted to go, she realized, or he would have figured out some way to stay.

Breathing a shuddering sigh, she placed the necklace ceremoniously in the center of a wooden jewelry box, lined with purple velvet. It was the same small, decorative box her mother had once used to store all her valuables, all the baubles in the world that had meant anything to her. And though Elena hated to admit it, the necklace she had sworn no longer to wear _still_ meant the world to her. Just as Stefan did, though she was equally resigned to the fact that he, too, was no longer going to be a daily, almost ritualistic part of her life.

He — nor the vervain-filled locket — would be any part of her life, from that moment forward.

She climbed into bed numbly, her hands finding the soft, cotton sheets without her mind accompanying them. She simply couldn't remember the last time she felt so empty at the prospect of change; the queen of calm was usually flexible, adaptable. It was unlike her to feel such a lack of options, a stiffness icily winding around her heart. But it didn't matter. It couldn't matter. She had no choice in moving forward, and with such an audience watching her, all eyes affixed to the queen of Robert E. Lee high school, she knew better than to think she could disappoint. There was no giving up, no running away for Elena, even if there was for Stefan.

Closing her dark eyes, she attempted to find sleep, to clear her mind.

Try as she might to seek some tranquility in sleep, the sole thing she was able to dream of that night was crows. Enormous crows, crows with human stares, crows that seemed to remind her of something… Or someone.

She chose not to speak about it, the next morning.


	3. Smile

**THEME TWO: **_**SMILE**_

"What is he _doing_ here?" Damon asked, pulling a disgusted face as he held up a photograph of Elena and Stefan for examination. The couple in the photograph were beaming, even Stefan's usually reserved demeanor broken for the sake of a Polaroid moment.

"What are _you _doing here_?_" she muttered, rolling her eyes at him.

"Visiting. Checking up. Being hospitable. Take your pick," he replied naturally, not bothering to look at her. She appeared over his shoulder, looking at the picture. Her brow furrowed delicately, and she was forced to swallow some wave of emotion she couldn't quite name. She and Stefan, before he decided life was less complex without the two of them facing it together.

It was a sickeningly sweet moment in time, though judging from the way Elena snatched the picture away, it was one that more or less simply made her sick, at the moment.

"He's smiling," she answered him curtly, plucking the picture away. "You should try it."

She turned her back, moving to find a suitable — and out of sight — home for the photo, and Damon pulled another face, already dark eyes darkening a perceptible shade. So she thought he didn't smile, did she?

It showed what she knew. There were many things that caused Damon to smile, though they were more often than not unpleasant for the recipient of said smile. Maybe his smiles weren't caused by puppies, kittens, sunshine, and rainbows, but they appeared, nevertheless. There were occasions when he could be surrounded by something so utterly pleasant or even funny that it sometimes became difficult to keep that same warmth from infecting him. There was no point in allowing it to do so for long, no reason to get Elena or anyone else in high hopes about touching some underlying soft spot of his and suddenly turning him into a melted pile of nothingness as was his brother.

But it didn't mean he couldn't show her, occasionally.

She turned from stashing the photograph, spinning around to come face to face with Damon. He was a silent predator, a jaguar slinking low in the underbrush towards something that never heard him coming, and yet, when he was there, he was undeniable. She could smell the subtle notes of cologne on his jacket, feel an imagined palpable warmth between them that seemed more likely to be her own radiating flush than the body heat that he did not give off. Immediately, her head was spinning, helping in absolutely no way by what came next.

Leaning in until Elena was forced to lean back to avoid contact, Damon held her gaze a moment. Dark eyes flickered with odd lights, playfulness corrupting the usually starless color of black she was used to finding there, and for a moment, she was downright terrified. Her heart hammered like a hummingbird's wings, her own pupils dilated with an acute note of fear and… if she were being honest, excitement. She had a vague idea of the possibilities of what _could_ happen next, but the safest bet with Damon was to not bet at all; whatever was expected, whatever he knew was anticipated, he would almost intently do the opposite just for a reaction.

Not that he was having trouble getting a reaction, as it was.

Eyes never moving from hers, Damon allowed his lips to curve into a genuine smile. Not the lightening quick, cutting smiles he usually threw, but a smile that took Elena's breath away. Two rows of astoundingly perfect, white teeth now served as tools of impressiveness, rather than intimidation, as she was quite used to, and she was left without any course of action, any plan to return the use of her words to her. It was exactly the reaction he wanted, and the idea of it made her face burn hot, blood filling out in a flush under her skin.

Finally breaking his stoic stillness, he quirked one dark brow.

"See," he said, grinning wolfishly as he tilted his head at her, "I know how to smile."

And then he was gone.


	4. Broken Pieces

**THEME THREE: **_**BROKEN PIECES**_

Every day angered her slightly more in its passing, making things rougher on her than necessary as every casual acquaintance, every friend she knew gave her the same sad smile, asked the same question—'_how long has it been, now, since Stefan…?_'. Just curious, she knew, although she suspected that to them her life was something more like a soap opera than truly the life of a human being, with real emotions and feelings. Not the ice queen she had crafted herself to look like, but a _person_.

She had never felt more alone, and yet, she knew realistically she was not. Not entirely, anyway. It had taken three weeks for her to realize that Stefan had not taken Damon with him, though she was quite sure that if Stefan realized this fact, he too would be returning to Fell's Church. Damon routinely came calling at the window, or waltzed right in the front door if Elena was home alone, simply on whim because she had once invited him, and now there was no one to bar him entrance. It seemed there was something else below the surface of it all, but she could only take a wild guess and assume it had something to do with getting back at Stefan, taunting him for his mistake of leaving without Damon in tow.

She still remembered the first time she'd encountered him in a moment of surprise, the first time he'd been there without her expecting to be.

She tiptoed lightly down the stairs in the dead of night, her throat parched and brow fevered from the same idiotic, painful dreams she had each and every night. The dreams in which Stefan left her, much the way he had in her waking life, but with more of a harshness to the entire scene. She was awake, though, and water would help her, or so she hoped desperately, walking blindly into the dark but familiar lower level of the house. There was no use for lights; she'd walked the same stairs at the same speed in the same lighting a million times over, by now.

She fumbled for a cup in what should have been half sleep, but was instead a pure jolt of awakened emotional dizziness. She would just get some water and go back to bed, she told herself. Just get some water and go back to…

"Thirsty?" asked a familiar, dark voice from the darkness of the kitchen.

She dropped the glass cup she'd been holding, the sheer shock of _any_ voice cutting the silence enough to make her heart stop. The fact that it had been this particular voice had only served to make every part of her freeze in anticipation, in disbelief, in shock. After all, Stefan had been absolutely positive that he'd lured Damon away with him, that his brother had followed him away from Fell's Church, for good. Since Elena had seen nothing of either brother for three weeks, she couldn't deny that she, too, had believed both Stefan and Damon alike to be long gone.

"What the hell?" she murmured, clutching a hand to her heart dramatically, and then made a move to cover herself where the pajamas she was currently donning did not. Damon raised his eyes brows and let them drop with a wag of approval.

"Not quite the welcome I was hoping for," he answered her shock dismissively. "Though I'm glad you dressed for the occasion. Red suits you."

She glanced down at herself as if she didn't realize what she was wearing; a red satin set of pajamas, the top half bearing a revealing cut. Why had she chosen _that_ particular pair? Then again, however, she didn't often stride about in her pajamas in front of an audience.

"Elena, are you okay?" A far away voice, Aunt Jenna, alerted her to the fact that she'd indeed shattered a heavy glass cup, and thought of nothing better to do than to assess her outfit. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, eyes dark and wide, motionless all over. Damon inclined his head and gave her a look of smug warning as if to say, better think of something.

She guppied for a moment, her mouth searching for words and finding none, before speaking. "Fine, Aunt Jenna," she replied, albeit only half convincingly. "Just… Dropped something."

"Do you need me to come down there?"

Elena's voice held a hint of urgency, and annoyance. "No, I've got it. It's fine."

She hurriedly found a broom, wanting to dispose of the glass quickly before someone got cut. After all, the last thing that she needed was to bleed at the moment, in the room with a thirsty vampire staring at her from the counter. She didn't have to wonder whether or not the creature in question was thirsty, because he was. Damon was _always_ thirsty.

"This is entirely fault, you know," she muttered angrily, busy sweeping to notice a change in the room's occupancy. She continued to sweep, catching the crystalline shards with the bristles of the broom and depositing them in the dustpan. There was still no answer from the peanut gallery, which was odd; he usually had a lightning fast response, and always had something to say. She looked up from what she was doing, briefly. "Why are you even…"

She was talking to an utterly empty and silent kitchen.


	5. I Can't

**THEME FOUR: **_**I CAN'T**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**Thank you everyone for reviewing! It seriously keeps my spirits up, and keeps me interested in writing for you guys. Please keep the reviews coming, and hopefully you'll enjoy these couple chapters, as well -- this one's probably my favorite thus far. Until next time, I'll try to post again as soon as I can.

---

There was some part of him that was not satisfied with mere mental confusion and the taunting; yes, it drew her closer every time, that much closer to being his and his alone, but there was no question that it was both losing thrill power and becoming vaguely unchallenging, the more they repeated their routine. And a routine it was, with Damon closing in tightly on Elena's withering self control, using the right body language, the right spoken charm to melt her on the spot. Then, she'd come ever so close to placing those irresistible lips against his, and just before she took the plunge, she'd draw back and whisper in that angel's voice: "I can't."

It usually ended with him seeing red hot flashes of anger exploding before his eyes; it was always the same. Every time he would draw her in, the sticky memory of Stefan, of the more worthless of the Salvatores, would creep back into her mind, and she would find his spell broken. It was a pity that Damon enjoyed the chase and Elena's own fire so much, or she would have been put under a literal spell, under true compelling. Instead, he had been driven by either some deep seeded masochism that lurked beneath his sadism or perhaps some innately brewed gentlemanly behavior on his part, and had yet to use the Power on either her mind or body since Stefan's leaving.

Once more, he heard the familiar words, though she had been the one to cross the room to him, to place her hands on his leather incased forearms, face tilted towards him. He remained as still and as impassable as stone, until he inclined his own face, ever so slightly. Their lips were less than an inch apart, and though at that moment all Damon should have been considering was the victory at claiming Elena, he could not move his thoughts from the exquisite taste of her kiss, however loathsome that thought was to have about a human.

"I can't. Damon, I _can't_," she murmured quietly, eyes peering regretfully up at him.

Thunder rumbled outside, the sky undoubtedly clouding quickly to match Damon's inner mood. It was always an 'I can't', always an excuse for why it was that St. Stefan of Desertion and Caging was more worthy of her affections than he was. And with what cause? Stefan had done nothing for Elena besides attempt to douse her inner fire, discover she was not Katherine reincarnate, and then flee. It was what Stefan did best, half doing things. It suited someone who, after all, was barely even half a vampire.

But Damon was more; he was stronger, quicker. He was more than Stefan was or ever could be, and could give Elena just that much. He could have taken it all from her if he had been so inclined, and yet, he had been merciful, hoping to give her what he knew was entirely within their grasps because his little fool awoken to her senses, bent her will to meet his own. It had yet to happen, however, and he was beginning to see that, even with all the intelligence in her head, the human mind was still feeble. The heart was changeable, however, and he knew this from personal experience.

But 'I can't' never changed anything.

"You will," he intoned with sudden resolve, his dark eyes narrowing, hand holding her wrist she could just forget about Stefan for a second, she would see…

Her dark brown eyes went wide with shock, and her body stiffened. Her heart rate sped up perceptibly, and the intrinsically human scent of fear wafted up towards him, breaking from the scent he knew to simply be Elena's own chemical signature. It was not the fear he was accustomed to sensing in her, which was the fear of what the two of them could do together, to each other, to Stefan. This time, it was a true and unrelenting bout of fear and revulsion, and it damned near made him sick.

She thought he was going to hurt her.

It was not the passing acceptance he usually felt off of her, the knowledge that, should the fancy strike him, he was entirely capable of hurting her. It was not the acceptance of the strength and magnetism he bore in relation to what she could do to fend him off. It was pure, unadulterated fear that she was in immediate danger of being injured physically or… He would leave it at simply injured, by him.

For a moment, he was sure he had allowed his dark eyes to fill with the disgust and anger he felt towards the notion, his mask slipping. She honestly thought that he would hurt her in order to gain what he wanted, or simply_ take_ from her all that he wanted. As though it was having a kiss or a warm human body in his possession that mattered so heavily to him, rather than the vessel from which these things came.

She registered the small moment of shock on his face, and realized she'd made a misstep. _I thought I understood you,_ she thought in confusion, searching his eyes as desperately as her chocolate orbs could keep up. She had seen something there, something unfamiliar.

"Damon…" she muttered, though the distinct flavor of her thoughts screamed, 'stay'. He could feel it, could hear it as thought it were written in plain English in the air between them.

Still, he dropped her wrist, gliding gracefully away from her and towards the open window, a mask of impenetrable steeliness settling over his momentarily vulnerable features. And still, he could hear her thoughts; _stay, please stay._

"You can't," he mimicked her coldly, eyes shielded from sharing even a hint of emotion. "And I won't," he added darkly.

With that, he was gone, a crow peeling away from the upper bedroom window and back into the night.


	6. Deep In Thought

**THEME FIVE: **_**DEEP IN THOUGHT**_

Looking in her window from where he lounged, something akin to a peeping tom, in the tree, Damon sighed. This was not a particularly good night to be taking inventory of his thoughts on the fragile human, something that had a slightly better chance at ending with prosperous results, had he been in a better mood.

There were times that he was flooded with admiration for certain qualities in her, for a strength that burned more brightly in Elena than in other mortals he had encountered. These times were usually quick bursts of appreciation that he kept entirely to himself, aside from the off color comment or well placed compliment dropped in order to get under her skin. The rest was left to her imagination, which he hoped was quite active indeed, given the usual way he went about interacting with her—sarcastic, coy, and snide.

There were moments, however, more frequent than the pangs of affection and less so than his charade of smugness, in which he truly _hated_ Elena. Not mere dislike, but pure, unrelenting, unadulterated hate for the dark haired human girl he had come to regard as a sort of pet, as a constant. It was an alarming feeling, one that crept over him without warning, and one that escaped him as quickly as he began to understand its nature. A fire that started in the core of his being and then raged out of control, the hate consumed him.

She reminded him of times he wished dearly to move on from, to forget as much as any vampire is ever able to forget something. Beyond mirroring Katherine's exact physical make up, she was nothing like the long dead woman. Katherine was a kitten, more suited for foolish and sentimental hearts like his brother, where Elena was a tigress. It was alluring, though on one hand, maddening. She mirrored in him things he enjoyed thinking no mortal could, Elena's personality almost as stubborn and begrudging as his own. The strength that she possessed refused to allow her to bow under the fear he was used to drawing out of humans, fear that seemed to escape her, entirely. Did she not understand who and what he was, what he was capable of doing to both her and all that she knew? The insolence of this human girl to deny him what he wanted in any capacity at times infuriated Damon.

But he understood _why_ she did not fear him.

The gentleness, the kindness that Stefan had showered her with had desensitized her to the truth at the heart of what they were. He had played with his kill so long that she had begun to feel more like a fellow predator than what she truly was: prey. Stefan had made her think that all vampires had an equal share of good within them just waiting to be discovered, when in fact, that was a lie. Not all vampires succumbed to their weak human emotions the way Stefan had, fraternizing with a human and treating her as an equal. The notion did not always astound or anger Damon, but when he thought on the prospect long enough, it most certainly did.

After all, there was no part of Stefan that Damon would verbally admit to wanting to immolate, and to think that Elena—fiery, strong, and independent Elena—would prefer a life of half living to a life of taking what she wanted as she seemed so accustomed to doing… The thought cut him, as did his punishment of having to watch her pine for someone who had quite literally willing left her to the wolves instead of running or the pack, or turning her into a keen predator herself. Oh, the strength a human like Elena could bring to her second life. There were hardly limits to what the two of them could accomplish, and yet, she seemed more content to waste away into fragility, waiting for someone as worthless as his brother than to seize the opportunity she had.

Growling in guttural, animalistic fury, he threaded his fingers through his hair.

It always boiled down to the same thing. It had with Katherine, and he was an idiot to believe it would have been different in any situation. The entire triangle left him wondering what it was he needed to do to become absolute and undeniably superior to Stefan. Stefan, who preserved the life of the living in a blow to his own strength. Stefan, who cared too much to infiltrate Elena's human world, any longer. St. Stefan, protector of innocence, virtue, and all that was right in the world, as far as any outsider would guess. Then again, Stefan rarely spouted tales about his less than saintly activities, the things he had done that would not make his adoring fans proud, because he chose to sacrifice himself to living in a world in which he could never be a real part of.

Not like Damon, who lived in the shadows. Not like the existence Elena deserved, which was one rich in pleasure, in power. Suddenly, his thoughts were racing, and he fought to submerge himself in the icy calm he was usually basked in; she was a human toy, a girl of few years, and of little importance. His only motive for sustaining her existence was his own intrigue and boredom in such a town as Fell's Church.

Or so he would have to keep telling himself, until he put the thought completely out of mind with other things. With the rich satin of a fresh kill, with the knowledge he possessed of his own power, with the expression on Stefan's face when Elena finally _did_ become his. He would simply have to wait until he could distract himself, and then, the glory of finally snapping her body into a million tiny shards and draining that delicate neck completely dry would be his.

For that particular night, however, he was finished dwelling on it. Thirst called, and he would not dare to deny himself the pleasure of answering. He bothered only to take one look back inside the dimly lit room from where he sat in the tree, Elena's form still flitting about the room, idly. Nothing that should have been of enough interest to keep him affixed to his current spot, and so, he would not allow it to be.

He leapt gracefully from the tree's sturdy limbs, though no vampire could be seen flying through the air, that night. Soaring up, there was nothing left but a large, black crow.


	7. Blood

**THEME SIX: **_**BLOOD**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Again, I'd like to say thank you to each and every one of you reviewing!

Blood isn't too surprising a theme, I'm guessing, given the fandom. But since I'm in a particularly good mood, writing something with a slightly more cheery turn wasn't too hard. Hopefully those of you asking for a bit more fluff will be sated with this chapter despite it's darkness. I'm pretty happy with, and it's a bit longer than I meant it to be. Nevertheless, I hope you'll all enjoy it and let me know what you thought.

---

He had often imagined what it would be like, how different it would be from his other mortal conquests. To take Elena's blood would be an experience that rivaled his other petty kills, he was told, and the very thought motivated him in keeping her a fragile human rather than making her his undisputed queen of the shadows. It wasn't the sole reason, of course, but it rather pleased him to pretend it was. If he could go on thinking that she was nothing to him but a vessel filled with exquisite blood, he could go on pretending happily that he was above the inconsequential little feelings that ate at him, from time to time.

Because, after all, blood was everything. It was his alpha and his omega, his master, his only modus operandi, his currency. It was everything in his life, and all that mattered even between he and Elena… Except when it was not, which was only when a burst of sharp self examination and honesty rocketed through him. Aside from those moments, which were kept absolutely private, all he would allow himself to think of was blood. The pale blue and sometimes purpling veins that ran crisscrossed under Elena's translucent skin, the sinful pleasure he imagined it would be to bury his canines into those veins, to drink her dry. Or not to, to drink of her, then to return the favor, as Stefan once had.

And oh, yes, he knew about that.

Stefan and Elena's bedroom activities were not a focal point he felt keen to keep his mental eye trained on, though no one could mistake the twin puncture wounds on her delicate neck, or the slight spring in Stefan's step, around the time that it had all taken place. Those times were long over now, Stefan having taken the coward's way out as he was so often prone to doing, and leaving Elena in the lion's den unguarded. It was not intelligent, leaving her with the knowledge and the desperation he had, but that was Stefan's mistake. Damon had arrived on scene not to clean it up, but to take advantage.

It was clear that she would never consent to giving her blood willingly, and an experience with having it drawn against one's will was nothing he wished upon Elena. When both parties were willing and interested, blood sharing could be an amazing, blissful event. Minds melding, pleasure sharing, unbelievable amounts of pleasant feelings on either side of the deed. When it was _not_ consensual, however, the human involved would be in the utmost torturous pain. As much as that had satisfied him in the past with other humans, their racing hearts and nerve centers alight with the red glow of pain, it was not what he wanted for himself and Elena, was not what he would have for her.

The first time he had an opportunity, the first time he had given in to his darker nature and used the power to lull Elena into a peaceful sleep, he could scarcely deny himself just a taste. Unlike Stefan, he was used to drinking to excess; he was never thirsty, never completely sated, and yet, never starving. He could always drink more, but never allowed himself to get to a point of desperation. It took all the fun out of hunting carefully, out of playing with his easily confused prey before striking to kill. At more than half capacity that night, he knew he could very easily avoid doing anything to Elena that caused her permanent damage.

The shadows of her room concealed him neatly, and he felt he fit into the darkness with ease. The bulk of his power was set on infiltrating the supposedly sacred sanctuary of her human dreams, while his consciousness was fixated on the thick line of blue that curved delicately up her long neck. He could already feel the natural responses; his canines elongated with a aching anticipation, his eyes darkening ever so slightly. It was the vampiric equivalent to a mouth watering at a delicious scent, and Damon's reaction was in full swing.

Her dreams were light, pleasant — he made sure of this. She dreamed of dancing, of the two of them pressed close with one another in a grand, empty ballroom. It was a real ballroom from Damon's own memories, but she had little reason to ever know this. With the high gilded ceilings and golden decorations, the ballroom simply looked like a figment of any girl's imagination, though maybe one who'd seen Titanic a few too many times. He was dressed in dapper fashion, and she, in a black ball gown. It was beautiful, even to Damon's own uneasily impressed standards.

"Do you like dancing?" he asked her in the dream, his smirk as real as it had ever been. Her cheeks flushed slightly, and he marveled at it; did she know this was a dream?

She did not require much more persuasion, placing a small hand in his as their dance began. They twirled in small circles, dancing with every bit as much grace as one would expect an expert hunter as Damon to muster. He pulled her along in his polished movements, his beautiful ragdoll, a slave to his motions and to the music that drove them both on. Piano music that plucked out a tinkling melody, loud enough to keep the both of them enraptured in the music at hand. As the sounds hit a crescendo, it began to wind down from there, and Damon dipped her in a low bow.

Her neck exposed, he knew the time was at hand; he leaned down and sank his teeth into the waiting skin of her exposed throat, immediately feeling… Everything. A thick, heavy sensation that he wouldn't dare shrivel enough to compare it only to human drunkenness washed over him. It was so much more powerful than any liquor or drug endued stupor he could imagine or conjure for himself. He could feel that she agreed, that she too felt the same explosion of white hot pleasure and content as he began to drink from her. It was a symbiotic relationship when a human was willingly given themselves over, one that benefitted the human with a feeling of warmth, happiness at giving. Beyond that, it was something different in each instance, and at the moment he could only register her complete and utter excited ecstasy at the situation.

He couldn't say if she would feel the same had she known it was not merely a dream, but he was satisfied with not asking questions, presently.

He didn't know how long his turn lasted, though he did not register that it may be time to stop until her color was all but drained. Prying his unwilling mouth from her slender neck, he wiped her crimson blood from his lips before using his own teeth to bite deep beneath the skin on his wrist, offering it to her.

"Will Stefan have to know?" she asked breathily in the dream, her conscious worries clearly present here, as well. Despite the dig that placed in Damon's good mood, he had little control over the brilliant, unsettling smile that crossed his lips.

"Angel, your secrets I would never tell," he promised her wickedly, too full and pleased with himself, at the moment to truly reign in his behavior.

With that, she greedily took his wrist to her lips, the blood flowing warmly into her mouth. Damon could feel all the edges of her emotions at the moment; she had more than a slight objection towards the situation, though he felt that ebb away slowly as the blood filled her, and was overpowered by an even more prevalent something. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it seemed to hold the shape of gratitude and affection. It was something that caught him vaguely off guard, as somewhere in there, there ought to have been an underlying layer of disgust, if Elena was truly as opposed to the truth, which was that she was made to have been with Damon. Here inner subconscious should have told her that 'dreaming' about him in this fashion and been revolted by it.

Needless to say, and much to his pleasure, she was not.

She seemed content with where they were, content with the fact that it was Damon, dealer of demons and wretched cursed thing from hell, in her arms, and not St. Stefan. The very idea was intoxicating, left Damon's head giddy; he had _won_. Perhaps not the war, but the battle, the momentary test of wills. He had won.

"Stop," he commanded her sharply when he feared it might be too much, that it might turn her if she consumed another drop of his life force. She looked up at him, dark eyes absolutely confused, alight with blood and renewal. Tracing the outline of her full lips, still covered in a rouge-like smatter of his blood, he smiled. "Even in dreams, there are limitations, angel."

She nodded, sadly but in understanding, and pulled herself from the flow of his sustenance. Her black ball gown had transformed into the black satin pajamas she was wearing outside the dream, and he felt himself frown; that alone was subtle evidence of where his mind was, and it did not point towards keeping Elena pacified and in the dark. Giving her one more long gaze, he abruptly ended the dream.

Using his power to keep her in a mental vice grip, he lulled her even more deeply into sleep, repositioning her body where she had been laying, even taking a moment to cover her up properly. The only evidence that he had been there at all were the two symmetrical pinpricks, two holes in the lower left side of her throat. Easily enough hidden, should she want them to be. Other than this one particularly telltale sign, there was nothing to suggest that Elena had been any less alone than she had any other night.

"_Buona notte_, little fool," he whispered to her formally, a little dumbstruck and taken aback by the entire experience, not to mention utterly full. This would not be the last night he indulged himself, as he knew he'd scarcely be able to say no to his own inner callings now.

Not after the reception he'd received, that night.


	8. Traps

**THEME SEVEN: **_**TRAPS**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Hey guys and gals! Once again, I'd like to thank each and every one of you for the kind reviews. I'm excited to see people are enjoying the one shots so much and that you're all finding my characterization to be so spot on. I try, and I'm stoked to see that it's all working out. Hopefully my next update will come sooner than this one, but I've had some real life issues taking me away from my writing for a short while. Enjoy!

---

Three days they had been on the road, heading towards God Knew Where.

Elena wasn't privy to their destination or their current location, something Damon had taken to either dismissing her questions about, or lulling her to sleep when she broached the subject. They were going somewhere, somewhere far away from Fell's Church, for reasons Damon did not care to explain. After suddenly finding herself asleep no less than four times and being spoken to like a child more times than she could count, Elena had simply given up asking, at all. After all, she was going to end up there whether she liked it or not, and there seemed very little point in delaying it all.

"What are we doing here?" she asked groggily, coming to as she rubbed wearily at her eyes. Her surroundings weren't identifiable, but she could easily tell from the pulsing fluorescent lights and gas pumps they were at some sort of gas station.

"Buon Giorno, angel," he mocked her, grinning. His smile shown with the victory of having been the reason she'd stayed asleep so long, his compulsion allowing him to doze her off whenever he no longer felt like dealing with her questions. The 'Who? What? When? Where?' game she played was sometimes energizing, and other times, annoying as all the fires of hell. When he had last compelled her to sleep, it had been the latter.

"It's night, from the looks of it," she complained, cracking her neck to relieve some of the sleepiness from her body. She stretched her long, lean limbs. "Why are we here?"

"Refueling," he answered simply, no hint of deeper meaning in his tone. She eyed the gas gauge, the needle currently just below the 'F'.

"We don't need any gas," she stated with a puckered brow, perplexed.

Next came an unsettling smile as he said, "I know."

She exited the car behind him although he had not told her to do so, and caught up with him easily, simply because he allowed her to. Placing a hand on her wrist, he moved her so that she was facing him. To any outsider, they simply looked like an average, albeit beautiful, couple having an ordinary conversation outside a Stop-N-Go. Elena might've laughed at the notion, had it actually been funny.

Damon leaned in, inconspicuously eyeing the counter as he did. "There is a man behind the front counter. In his early twenties, brown hair, blue eyes. He's wearing a red vest. You'll go to this man, and you'll tell him you're traveling from out of state. You'll tell him you're parked in the back, and that you just happen to think you're low on oil," he instructed her, dark eyes connecting and conveying the seriousness of his instructions to her without the need for compulsion. "He'll come and inspect the car, and… I'll get the necessary details tied up while he does."

"What are you—" she began, cut off by his finger on her lips.

"Now is the time for shutting up, and listening. Yell for help, pull any damsel in distress crap, and everyone in the store is dead before he can make a single move. Got it?" he warned her, speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a child.

"Fine," she conceded, knowing he meant what he had said. Heels clicking on the pavement, she made her way across the empty parking lot and towards the store.

She should have understood, in retrospect. She should have known what she was doing, but she had no idea. Damon was many things; a fast talker, a con artist, a thief, a killer. So many things that she was sure at the time that any of them could have been the reason for luring out the clerk in the middle of the night. It was like having faith in a wolf, and yet, Elena continually extended her better optimism where Damon was concerned.

The bell above the door rang as she entered the gas station, perusing several aisles of useless junk before making her way to the front counter, where low and behold, a man matching Damon's description stood. Elena forced a smile when she looked at him, and nervously laughed. "Hi," she began, unsurely.

"Hey, what can I help you with?" he asked, routinely.

Elena gave him the speil Damon had instructed her to, details added for the benefit of realism. She was from out of state. Her car was making some clicking sound. No, she didn't check the oil. Oh, it was embarrassing, but she didn't quite know how. Would he mind coming around back to help her? What a kind stranger to help her out.

With that, they exited the rear of the gas station, rounding the corner to where her car was supposed to be parked.

"I thought you were parked back—" the clearly puzzled young man began, cut off by a quick flash that ended with a gurgle of screams and a sickening _crack_. Elena's own screams were extinguished in her throat, the sensation of Damon's Power rushing over her. He was behind her inability to cry out, and behind the pain being inflicted on the clerk. She couldn't make sense of it in the dim light, but it didn't take Elena long to realize what was happening.

Damon was killing him.

It seemed as though it was over before it had begun, the man's body limp at Damon's feet, Damon wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The pure terror that gripped her would not let go, worsened only by the unnatural angle at which his head was now turned in juxtaposition to the rest of his body. Damon stepped forward into the dim light and smiled, eyes shining, lips stained red with blood.

Suddenly, she could scream. The moment the first sound escaped her mouth, she found a hand clasped over it, Damon's body flush with the back of hers. She knew she was being foolish, her lungs burning with the volume of her scream, but there was so little she could do. It could have been five seconds, five minutes, or five hours, but Elena screamed until tears burned in her eyes, and cried until her cheeks were slick. When she found the hold on her mouth was making her unable to breath, she panicked.

"Are you going to shut your mouth?" Damon asked, controlled anger evident in his voice. When Elena failed to respond with something other than more screaming, he rolled his eyes and maintained his grip. She pawed ineffectually at his hand, searching for air to soothe the burning in her aching lungs, but he was not letting up. The only way to get air back into her body was by calming down, and Damon was fully prepared to let her turn blue if she didn't figure such important things out.

After a few moments of trying, Elena had calmed her cries down to whimpers. After the whimpers faded, there was only light sniveling, which seemed to be assurance enough for him. He slackened his grip slightly. "Have we got that our of our system?" he asked, tauntingly.

She nodded silently beneath his grip. After holding on for a second or two longer, Damon let free her mouth inch by inch, making sure she made no sudden moves.

"Good girl," he commended her in an acidic sneer, stroking her hair back into place. She swatted away his hand in disgust, and the rage emanating from him was practically tangible.

"Get away from me," she ordered him weakly, her tears still thickening her voice. It was all she could do not to vomit, not to look at the body that lie at their feet. "Don't you ever touch me. Just… Don't."

"Oh, how wonderful," he half shouted, kicking the body itself before lounging idly on the brick wall of the gas station. His casual demeanor was all the more unnerving to her. "We're back to the 'Big Bad Wolf' routine. I'm hardly in the mood tonight, princess."

"I mean it, Damon. Stay the hell away from me," she commanded him, holding out an arm to keep him from getting too near to her, as though that would stop him in a moment of determination. Obviously, the challenge was an affront to his power, and he felt the need to show her just how unswaying her feeble attempt had been.

Grabbing her by the wrist, he pulled her back around to the front of the gas station with ease, pausing only when they met his car.

"Get in the car," he told her, shortly.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she responded, hate coloring her every word. Her stand was meant to speak to her ability to keep her own ground, but it seemed largely lost on Damon. He merely found it insufferably annoying at the moment, though it was part of her larger appeal. Presently, he was having a difficult enough time controlling himself without trying to find a reason to approve of her foolishness.

"You _will_ get in the car, or I will _make_ you get in the car," he warned her, teeth on edge.

"Why did you have to do that?" she asked, too numb to register the threat in his instructions from moments before. A slightly puzzled look crossed his face.

"Why did I have to do what?" he asked, one brow in the air.

"Kill that man, what else?!" she all but yelled, frenzy rising in her voice as she tried to reign in her disbelief that he could even question what part of the evening had offended her. To know that Damon slaughtered human beings for sustenance was one thing, but to see it happen, to watch him feed and see someone die in the process of merely keeping Damon alive… It was an entirely different experience.

"What did you _think_ I was doing with him?" he asked her, his voice electric with anger and the swell of power that came from fresh blood. The intensity of it froze her, though she begrudgingly forced words through her own lips. "Why did you _think_ you were delivering him to me?"

"I didn't think it would come to that," she answered weakly, staring at the blood on her hands. Though she hadn't been the one to end the man behind the counter, she couldn't help feeling responsible in some way, or at least, disgusted by the part she had played. She could hardly stand the idea of contributing. "I didn't agree to be a part of this, Damon. I'm not your bait."

He growled in response, pinning her between his body and that of the car. There was no hope of moving under his weight, despite the fact that he was not exerting any painful pressure on her small frame.

"Would you rather it be you, then?" he asked darkly, black eyes blazing as he towered over Elena imposingly. His face lit with a light smile, still sinister as he spoke. "Or maybe Bonnie, she's always looked tempting. Oh, or how about your Meredith friend? She's got that succulent little vein that runs from about here to—"

"Stop it," she hissed, batting away the hand that had lifted to illustrate the tracery of Meredith's vein that ran up from the collarbone. Elena shuddered at the thought of Damon doing to any of those people she held so dear to her what he had done to the convenience store clerk, and had to force the images from her mind. "Just stop it."

"Then don't forget who you're talking to," he ordered her blackly, ceasing mention of Meredith's finer attributes and of drinking her friends, in general. "My name is _Damon_, not St. Stefan. And this means…" he gestured in waiting.

"That you do what you want, when you want, unapologetically," she tiredly supplied from repetition and memory. There was so little fight left in her at this point.

"You know me all too well," he commended her with one of his unsettlingly quick smiles. Chivalry shining through an iota, he opened the door to the sleek, black car for Elena, pausing just before shutting the door. "I don't _do _patient and merciful, so learn quickly — I'm not going thirsty, one way or another. So, truly, it's them, or it's you, no grey area. _They_ are meaningless to me, pathetic excuses for meals. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Not a damned thing. They're simply walking soup kitchens."

"I get it," she sharply intoned. He didn't need to clarify any further. Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she looked away from him, then back again.

"So what does that make me?" she asked boldly. "What am I to you?"

He thought for a moment, and if she hadn't known better, she would have sworn she saw a momentary softness in his eyes before he spoke. It was gone too quickly to be sure, however, replaced by a devilish glint.

"A delicious little toy I haven't yet enjoyed enough to break."

With that, the conversation ended in the slam of a car door.


	9. Expectations

**THEME EIGHT: **_**EXPECTATIONS**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

The second chapter I'm posting for you lot today, and here's to hoping you'll enjoy it. It was sort of a spur of the moment idea, and it truthfully isn't my favorite chapter, but hopefully you won't think it too awful. Much love to absolutely everyone reviewing!

---

She knew it was foolish, risking time alone with Damon in order to rifle through Stefan's things just one last time. When put in those words, with no uncertain terms, it sounded plainly foolhardy, but she didn't have much of a choice. She needed something, anything, just so she would know where it was he had gone, what had spurred him to realize what he already knew and use it as motivation to run away. The answer, she had decided, lay in his room at the top of the stairs, the only door in the entire estate that was ever locked. If she just found something that would give her the smallest piece of mind, she had sworn to herself she could close that chapter of her life, for good.

She was lying, of course, but it felt good, regardless.

Her high lasted until she actually topped the stairs, finding the home empty, and all of Stefan's things boxed into a single trunk. The rest of the room was barren, empty like some awful breeze had blown everything away. He had said once that all his memories were contained in the room, and now… Well, now, there was but a desk and an oak trunk to fill the great void that was his living space.

She pilfered through the trunk for an hour in silence, putting aside a small mountain of useless items in her quest for closure; snapshots, letters, diaries, strange and insignificant mementos that would likely mean something only to Stefan. Each artifact helped to reinforce the fact that he had indeed existed, though each one served an equal purpose of breaking her heart farther.

It was not until she scanned one particular picture that her breath stopped short.

The olive-skinned woman in the picture had tendrils of dark hair that fell in a cascade of curls, volume at an unbelievable high, and framing a face of utter composure and seriousness. The lips were full, and the brow was arched above brown eyes framed by long, luxurious lashes. The subject of the photograph was undeniably beautiful, but it was none of these things that had caused the swell of shock in Elena; it was the fact that she recognized each and every inch of the stranger, and more so, that she recognized each and every inch as someone she saw in the mirror every day.

More shocking than this was Damon's smooth voice in her ear, the weight of his body pressed against hers from behind. "It isn't polite to break and enter, though I think I'll make an exception, since it's only my brother's things we're discussing," he chided her tiredly, sounding for all the world like a babysitter who had repeated the same warning a million times over. For a moment, his warning seemed lighthearted, though it became obvious otherwise when she felt him tense. The moment she turned to face him, he was gone, standing beside her and having snatched the picture from her grasp.

"I wasn't—I mean, I didn't…" she stammered, cheeks flushing; since when did _she_ have a problem with words? Regardless, Damon went on as though she'd never spoken at all.

"I take it he never showed this to you?" he muttered, looking at the picture as though it were a mere trifle before tossing it haplessly back onto the pile of Stefan's belongings. Elena knew there was more behind the vacancy in his eyes than he meant to allow her into, though she made no mention of it, out of respect and perhaps out of fear. Those dark orbs scanned the yellowing photograph with a steeled reverence, an impenetrable wall of rock made to keep hidden whatever feelings were evoked. As soon as she realized the look was there, it was gone.

"No," she responded quietly, voice shaking, "he didn't."

And she realized why that was, now.

If he had shown her the picture any sooner, she may have ended things completely. After all, it wasn't hard to see why it was he had been so drawn to her. He had seen Katherine every moment, and never bothered to explain it to Elena. And who could blame him?

"St. Stefan, keeping secrets?" Damon tsked, his momentary longing for the photograph's memories seemingly passed. He was currently leaning against the large oak desk that she had found the photo on, arms bent to brace himself backwards against it; the curvature of his body was as feline and lounging as it had ever been, despite the tension of the moment. "It isn't like him. Not the 'him' _you_ were oh so taken with, anyway."

She didn't miss the quick flash of Damon's lightning grin or the lack of genuineness in his nonchalance as he examined his nails. Clearly, any emotion he'd been wrestling with moments before had been replaced with the usual contempt for Stefan and the typical healthy dose of torment aimed at Elena.

She merely shot him a look in response to the quip, already resigned to the fact that even her sharp wit would not win here; Stefan had lied to her in certain respects, and had failed her in others. She looked down and sighed. What aid could she truly give to Stefan as a character witness, against Damon or anyone else, for that matter?

"Though I can't say I don't understand his strategy. Clever, really," he muttered, giving a shrug as he begrudgingly complimented his brother's intelligence. The glimmer of appreciation for Stefan was short lived as usual, and his eyes turned to Elena, burning with something a bit lighter than before. "But a useless approach, nonetheless. Katherine and yourself, completely different breeds. A sun shower to a hurricane, a match to an inferno… A kitten to a tigress."

She knew where this was going, and yet, she refused to stop it.

"He thought you'd become something like that, like her. This childlike doll with fangs and grace and a stomach full of dove's blood, and—viola!—just like that, things would be perfect. Like she was still alive," Damon narrated lazily, waving a hand about loftily. Elena was stunned into silence by the less than prose-like fashion in which he laid out Stefan's ideology of the situation. Her heart ached at the idea that every time they'd kissed, every time they'd exchanged blood, every time _anything_, he'd been seeing Katherine. Damon had to know this, his abilities rendering him able to gather the shape of her thoughts if not the actual words, even at his very weakest, and yet, he went on.

"If he ever changed you, at all. Hell, for all I know, he planned to keep you human until the end of your days, live vicariously through a Katherine with a heartbeat," he said the words as though the idea disgusted him, keeping her alive and human. A twitch of his eyebrows found Damon smiling, slightly. "But like I said, it never would have worked. You were nothing alike, truthfully. Any simpleton with half a brain could see that, and that's being generous for my brother's sake."

Elena's voice caught in her throat, and she scarcely believed how small it sounded to her own ears; "What was she like?"

"Excuse me, darling, but you'll have to speak up," Damon feigned hard of hearing, cupping his hand to his ear despite the fact that they both knew perfectly well how acute his hearing was. He simply wanted the pleasure of drawing out her aggravation.

"I said," Elena forced out, unsure she really wanted to know, "What was she like?"

He paused for a moment, as if trying to remember, and Elena felt her impatience rise.

"She was beautiful. She was innocent, and full of light, something like a child. Very much like a child, actually; simplistic and white lighted. She had this way about her, it was…" he searched for the right word. Elena's heart hung above a great precipice, ready to shatter if Damon, too, uttered the word 'wonderful' or any synonym thereof. He seemed to note her thoughts and her anxiety, casting a meaningful glance at her as he continued, "Insufferably good."

This was why Stefan had loved Katherine, why he had thought he loved Elena. He had envisioned her becoming something like his first love, something pure of heart, worthy of his affections. He had pictured Elena becoming something better than she was. Even Damon seemed enamored with the idea of what Katherine had been, despite his apparently newfound disdain for all things good in nature. They had loved her, and they had feuded over the one thing that resembled her — a knockoff impersonation of the real thing. Elena could feel her imposter heart crumbling as she processed it all.

"Then what am I?" she asked, voice soft. It was more rhetorical than anything, though she had almost immediately known that any chance to talk and be listened to that Damon got, he would take. Before long, his voice was breaking the silence, once more.

"As I said, nothing like Katherine," he assured her again, moving to stand within a dangerous proximity of her, once more. His hand found the ends of her dark hair, twirling a section of it idly around his finger as he spoke, and she couldn't help the slight hitch of her breath or the miniscule incline of her body towards his. Physical response to stimuli.

"Your supposed 'goodness'," he quoted and spat the word rather than spoke it, "is hardly diamond strength. Break through that goody two shoes veil and you've got a cold, selfish, survival-driven, little black heart that looks out for itself. You're not _nearly_ as concerned with lives and interests and humanitarian _non_sense that don't benefit your own agenda as Stefan might like to have thought."

"So I'm everything that she wasn't? Every awful thing Stefan couldn't stand to look at," she accused him hatefully, clearly feeling it was his fault for putting it that way.

He replied with a whiplash tongue, his black eyes burning with flames of mirth.

"You're every natural thing poor little Stefan couldn't handle," he told her with certainty, the intensity of his eyes bearing down on her. "Everything he wanted to repress, ignore, get rid of in a strange, Freudian sense of the word. You're everything he was too weak and pathetic to accept that _he_ was, too. You've got a flame inside of you that Katherine couldn't manage if she set herself on fire, and Stefan would just have extinguished that. Turned you from a tigress into a housecat, and wasted a perfectly useable template for a strong, powerful vampire."

By this time, Damon had taken on the voice typically reserved for his more passionate speeches, and Elena couldn't help the second rise of blood to her cheeks; clearly, the issue was something he felt ardently about, and though the adjectives tossed her way would have from any other source been offensive, she knew the point he was hammering in.

"He loved me, Damon," she countered, weakly, knowing that if he had, he would never have left her. If he had loved her, he would have loved all of her, though she couldn't decide whether this was a trick of Damon's compelling speech, or her true thoughts. He didn't seem to care one way or another, giving a growl in frustration.

"Poor, tragic lovely little love and her dear, pathetic St. Stefan," he mocked her sarcastically, his face oozing false sympathy as he called her by the nickname Stefan had bestowed upon her. He had barely finished his mockery before the look of harsh, unforgiving returned, and a hard glint came to his eyes as he snapped his fingers, causing Elena to jump. "If he loved you so much, why in the hell would he leave you here? With _me, _no less? And don't pretend he doesn't know, that he hasn't _always_ known, what was going through that pretty little head about me…"

Elena's stance was less vulnerable at this accusation, and she felt herself stiffen defensively.

"He does not," she shot back hastily, amending her defense with, "because there's nothing to know. You're _nothing_ to me, and Stefan knew it. If he knew you were here, that I was here with you, he'd… He'd…"

"Realize what I've told you both since day one?" he asked, quirking a dark brow humorously. Elena searched for the repetition that he spoke of, coming up empty.

"And that would be what?"

Oh, the satisfaction she knew she simply had to be giving him, reacting with such a fiery temper as she currently was. Being icily calm would have been a better torture than to show him the brazen creature lurking inside her that he seemed to enjoy taunting so very much, but it was damned difficult to maintain her cool in the face of his provocation.

This, she was purely certain, he knew well.

"That you were always better suited to being _mine_," he told her, his voice calm and factual until the sudden injection of possessiveness on the final word. The note was somewhere between the claim of a hunt and ownership over a precious jewel, but either way, it caused a shiver to run up her spine. She was suddenly more keenly aware of the faint hint of coolness to his breath, to the lack of effort it would take to tilt her head just slightly until their lips…

"I need to go," she told him most certainly, moving out from where she'd become wedged between Damon and the wall. She was half surprised he allowed her to walk away, something she knew was done purely on his whim. _Before I can't anymore,_ she mentally added to herself. As if one cue, Damon's smirking voice followed her.

"When you wake up from this Shakespearean romance thing you've got going on," he called darkly to her turned back, "you know where to find me. But in the meantime…

… I know where to find you."


	10. Sacrifice

**THEME NINE:** **_SACRIFICE_**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Hello lovelies! As usual, I'd first like to say thank you a tremendous amount to each and every one of you reviewing. It means a lot that you're all so fond of my writing, and it's always a plus to hear that my characterization is good. I did sort of heed the call for fluff in this one, or at least, my twisted brand of fluff, as the Damon/Elena pairing isn't one with a ton of wiggle room for fluff without making Damon a marshmallow, in my head. So, here's hoping you all enjoy a little sweetness between them, which is set to take place after Damon encounters Logan in the episode 'The Turning Point', sans Stefan, of course. Oh, and if the formatting is wonky... Blame the uploader!

**WARNINGS:** A spot of language in this one, ladies and gents.

---

His pressed black shirt lay in curls of tattered fabric at his feet, leaving his upper half exposed to the waistband of his pants. It was a state of undress Elena knew she had never seen Damon in prior to that moment, and despite the way his skin was stretched taut over the lean muscle of his stomach, there was an entirely different reason Elena's eyes were glued to his form.

He was doused in a thick covering of… Blood? Blood that seemed to belong to him, from wounds that did not cry self infliction. Bullet wounds, she would have guessed, if she knew no better. The blood that decorated his torso was thickly spread across his pale skin, a shock of color against an otherwise monochromatic landscape, in the absolute worst way.

"Damon," she gasped, her mouth lingering open, searching for words. "You're hurt."

He stayed focused on the image in the mirror. He did not acknowledge her _clairvoyant_ observation, merely concentrating on pulling out of himself what looked to be one of a dozen or more embedded bullets, this one coming from his upper shoulder. A slightly grunt of pain, and the offending woodchip found itself tossed to the floor with the others. There was already a small pile of them at his feet, and many more to be added. The blood poured freely from the wound, and just the sight of it turned Elena's stomach.

"Figured that out all on your own?" he quipped, teeth gritted as he gingerly touched the edges of the wound. "Good for you."

"What… What happened?" she asked, in shock. Up until that moment, she had thought Damon, as well as vampires as a whole, to be invincible. Obviously she'd been off.

"Logan. Fucking. _Fell_. God. Damned. Wooden. _Bullets,_" he cursed, his jaw set as he attempted to maneuver out yet another bullet. He was attempting to keep the pain from reaching his eyes, but he'd failed; his facial expression crumpled for a split second, his pride not enough to keep him from admitting the obvious intensity of the pain he felt.

Immediately, Elena's heart ached. She didn't understand what had happened to him, but wooden bullets were something Stefan had explained—enough to wound a vampire until staking was an option, or enough to kill, if enough of them were pumped into even the strongest of vampires. How _many_ would be needed to kill was never something that had been specified, but Elena couldn't mask her horror at the sheer number of them still in Damon's body.

And then, something happened; her horror turned to decisiveness, and she saw a solution. If Damon were to feed, his healing process would be expedited, his body more able to renew itself that way. If she were to help him in becoming a willing donor, no innocent lives would be lost in efforts to save his own. It seemed logical enough, though she knew it was not intelligent to even _think_ what she was about to offer to him, and yet, she found herself unable to simply idle by while he writhed in pain. Still, trusting Damon with the right to drink from her in a taking mood was something akin to the lion tamer's neck within the jaws of the lion itself.

Both the willing tamer and Elena would simply have to hope that neither predatory cat was in a greedy mood, that evening.

"I can help you," she finally whispered, her voice faint.

"Much better times to suggest playing doctor, princess," he growled, though his anger was not directed at Elena this time. Still, his volatile nature made him a dangerous candidate for practicing self control under such unrelenting pain, and Elena flinched. He'd clearly misunderstood the implications of her 'help'.

Clearing her throat, she spoke.

"No," she clarified, swallowing hard on the fear amounting in her body. There was no time for cowardice in this situation, and she lifted her wrist to his eye level, blue veins visible beneath her skin. Continuing, she urged, "My blood, Damon… It can help you."

He eyed her suspiciously, his blood soaked fingertips pausing where they'd been working to excavate another bullet. He had every reason to be suspect of her offer, and though there was no ill intent or malice behind it, she understood his unwillingness to take that at face value. His dark eyes scrutinized her carefully, and she felt as though the moment went on, forever. She could feel his Power at the edge of her consciousness, registering the tone and shape of her thoughts, hopefully coming up with nothing but pure intentions.

"I just want to help you," she told him, her voice more tender than she could ever recall it having been when directed at Damon. _Please_, she mentally begged him,_ just make it easy. _But, of course, there was to be no such ease in anything that involved Damon.

He grinned.

"My, my, Elena. I'm surprised at you," he chided her flatly, raising his eyebrows for emphasis. "After all, what would poor, _dear _St. Stefan have to say?"

She couldn't imagine what Stefan would have said, because she knew that he was not dense enough to see it only for what it was on the surface. He would undoubtedly read into the feelings that had been fostered in his absence, the dependence on Damon that seemed to be nurtured by his continual popping up, where as Stefan never so much as returned to see that she had escaped his departure still breathing. He could never miss the flicker of _something_ she'd begun to hold for Damon, even if it was a something she chose to ignore almost completely, a good deal of the time. The offering of her blood would make it fairly obvious, she knew, to both Stefan and Damon himself. One of these variables she could handle, could prepare for; she could not stomach the thought of both.

"Stefan isn't here," she told him quickly, her fierce tone brooking no argument. Though she'd been firm, Damon was not one to heed anyone's warnings, least of all Elena's.

Smiling weakly, he tilted his head, his eyes shimmering as he found the strength to drag things out dramatically and to his liking, even through the pain he was in. Pursing his lips in thought, he asked the one question she'd been praying he would leave untouched.

"And if he were, you'd still be feeling so generous?"

She drew in a breath. He couldn't really be asking if she'd consent to his possible death if Stefan suddenly waltzed through the door, and yet, of course, if anyone had the audacity to ask something so impolite, it was Damon. But, of course, he could read the answer in her helpless eyes, though she couldn't bare to speak it out loud — _yes_.

_Yes_, she would have, at this point, offered Damon the keys to life and healing, because she knew so much more now than she had when she had welded herself so tightly to Stefan. To be under his every command, to adhere herself to him with such unquestioning devotion… it had been wrong of her. But she could not acknowledge that in her waking thoughts, and God forbid she ever spoke it on her conscious tongue. Her brain may have been wrenching free of Stefan's hold, but her heart was only ever so slowly learning to do the same.

"Damon, please," she pleaded with him desperately, "don't do this, now."

He paused for a moment, considering her plea, before smiling in a startling fashion.

"As you wish, darling," he muttered, eyeing the tracery of her veins appreciatively. His lips brushed the area in a caress that was neither kiss nor taste, somewhere between affection for a woman and appreciation of fine prey, before that predatory mouth curved backwards to reveal his elongated canines.

His teeth pierced her skin, sinking into the waiting vein that throbbed blue beneath the translucent covering. There was the momentary pain that accompanied any such wound, the twin pinpricks of puncture, but those were gone in an instant, his razorblade teeth meeting no resistance in the soft flesh. There was a faint noise from him, and Elena struggled to hear it over the thrum of her own heartbeat, over the electric buzzing that radiated from his core. There was no use, however. The noise was gone, and her eyes fell shut gently.

She knew the victory gloat that would follow his realization of how deeply under his spell she was put, but she was powerless to reign in her reaction. Having her blood drawn out not only in accordance with her will but as an absolute offer, a gift, was a meltingly intense experience. She could feel his strength replenishing; she feel his intoxication at the taste of her blood and the entire situation's connotations, every cell in his body energizing with the renewal of drinking to heal, and with the triumph he had proved over her willpower. After all, the flow of feelings and connectivity to them worked both ways, and there was very little reason to _wonder_ when he _knew_ she'd been defeated.

He could feel it, and she knew it. He could undoubtedly feel her euphoria, her absolute positivity. It was an instinctual reaction which far surpassed the happiness she felt at his finally giving in to her offer of healing. She understood, for a split second, the minds of the sadomasochistic crowd, who blurred the lines of pleasure and pain until they were met with something like what she had, that something in the middle of the two that was unequalled bliss with a furious intensity. It was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before, even in past encounters with Damon, himself.

It was every secret wish she'd ever had, fulfilled. It was a summer's night that stretched on and on towards perfection. It was a cool drink of water. It was love. It was hate. It was aching. It was pleasure. It was falling forever into the dark, into black velvet waves that was whatever was inside of Damon. It was _every_thing, and she couldn't even muster the shame it would take to be embarrassed that he knew how deeply she felt it. It was simply impossible to feel a negative thing for the negative things they were and not for the twisted, faux-positives Damon continually made them out to be.

It was not until she began to feel faint, not until her color was drained, and her knees were buckling underneath her, that the current slowed. He could have continued to the point of death and she likely would have died smilingly, but instead, he chose to stop.

As he stopped, slowly but surely the feeling of oneness began to ebb, replaced by lightness. The lightness broke into an exhaustion, a dark feeling she couldn't describe soon enough before it swallowed her up. It could have been death, for all she knew, and yet, she made the conscious decision to simply trust it. Whatever was happening, what had just taken place was real, a true to life memory, an experience. Not a lie, not merely a dream.

Dreams sounded undeniably pleasant, at the moment. She could hardly keep her eyes open, the lids as heavy as slabs of marble, even as she felt herself being lowered onto something soft. It could have been a bed, or for all she knew, it could have been a cloud. Either way, she was rendered absolutely unable to resist his call to rest, his deep, satin voice beckoning her to sleep, her senses registering shut off one by one as dark took over.

"Sleep now,angel," he commanded from far away, a slender hand brushing her cheek.

And she did.


	11. Seeing Red

_**SEEING RED**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

As always, thank you immensely to absolutely everyone who is reviewing! I appreciate it so much. And just in case anyone's wondering, this particular piece was written to sort of describe a manic, frenzied state of hunger that just sort of _hit_ Damon, all the sudden. The soundtrack to this could be 'Crushingly Close', a mash up of 'Closer' by Nine Inch Nails, and '#1 Crush' by Garbage—it was totally playing the entire time I was writing. Sorry to everyone hoping for a little more fluff, but hey, I think you'll like this, as well. :P

---

He could smell her perfume — something lacy and vanilla — from his downwind position at the windowsill. Her hair cascaded in a spray over her white pillowcases, a contrast even in the dark of the room, which was, of course, no issue for Damon. He could see everything, every tiny movement of her sleeping face, every rise and fall of her chest. He could see her eyes still behind their lids, and he would see when they began to flit back and forth, indicating her arrival at the blessed altar of REM, when he could slip into her dreams and lure her into a state of peace. Only when she was most peaceful in dreams could he draw from her some form of consent from her, and then, he could drink.

It was just a matter of waiting, and of showing perfect restraint when the time came. It was difficult, more and more so all of the time, to control her dream world while still keeping his own thirst under control. After all, 'easy' barely began to describe the lack of effort it would take for him to bleed her completely, to drink every last drop in her body. Those dark eyes would never again open, her Angel's mouth never forming his name on her tongue again in this plain of existence, but when he allowed his mind to drift to the pleasure it would be to absolutely glut himself on her sweet blood…

Suddenly, it was all so _close_. Too close, much _too_ close. And hot, hot, hot. Warm body heat. Warm stream of blood. Warm. Too much in the same room with her sleeping form, too much trust placed on his shoulders not to simply snap her neck and enjoy the spoils of his kill. Her pulse was loud, thrumming and inviting him beneath the supple skin, whispering to him about the deliciously swollen carotid artery running up either side of her slender neck and how easily the skin would give if he were to test it with his fangs. His vision clouded, and he chalked it up to the heat — oh, the heat, the stifling and smothering heat. It was almost unbearable, no longer whispering, but screaming to be heard, a roaring that deafened his logical senses, if truly Damon possessed these at all.

Even if he did, at that moment, those same supposedly logical senses were now beating themselves against the walls of his predatory mind, begging for him to just try it, to remember the mind blowing taste of her blood when he had sampled it in the past, and how quenching the thick, hot stream of liquid could and would, definitely would, be.

He could drain dry every human he encountered between Elena's bedroom and the boardinghouse, and it still wouldn't make a dent in his hunger. Only her blood, the devil of persuasion inside him reminded, could make it stop, entirely. But he didn't need to be reminded, because he knew damned well. He was achingly aware of the lusciousness of her blood, the victory fire that went up in his spirit as he conquered her steadily falling walls, the natural high of the kill, or rather, the drink. He remembered it all, and without her absolute cooperation, without her _begging_ for him to drink from her, he knew all his searching and dreaming and wanting and pining would be in absolute vain. Nothing could ever again be so intoxicating as the feeling of her giving herself over to him so freely, especially not the taking of her blood as she slept.

But God, he wanted it.

In the moment, he truly wanted to drain Elena dry, to drink of her until there was nothing left but a corpse for appreciation, to drink until he couldn't drink a single drop more. His mind was wall to wall _want_ with very little leeway for logic or long term thought, where he would realize he didn't truly want to break his fragile little human toy, after all. All he knew was what the inner monstrosity wanted, his most primal urge: _TO_ _DRINK HER._

And if there was one thing Damon Salvatore lacked utter expertise in, it was delaying or denying himself whatever it was he might want. The age of instant gratification was catered perfectly to his personality, steeped in the tradition of getting whatever he wanted the moment the fancy struck him, consequences be damned. The stakes in this particular game were high, however. So very, very high. It was merely taking him a while to latch on to this fact and understand it fully through the haze of red that had clouded his vision, assuring him darkly that he could complete the whole process without ever causing her pain. He didn't want to _hurt_ her, of course; he merely wanted his own satisfaction.

Before he realized his own actions, he was poised over her form, staring down at her, imagining his teeth sinking in, imagining her… Dead. Cold. Eyes staring endlessly. Covered with her own blood, which would undoubtedly cover him as well, when he finished.

_No_.

The thought of her being gone from the world was enough to part the haze for just a moment, enough for him to see clearly for a split second. He enjoyed her in her living, breathing state, and if there was any other form he preferred her in, it would be the vampiric form he had planned for her, in time. Not rotting in a pine box, somewhere. That was a fate that was not to befall Elena, not while he had a choice in the matter, and choice he very much had, this particular time.

Growling almost silently in frustration, he backed away from her and leaped with catlike dexterity out the open bay window which he had entered in. Elena was safe, and his, for another night, and he comforted himself with this knowledge and with the power of the choice he'd made. He couldn't help feeling something like a knight in shining armor, in a twisted sense of the words. After all, he had neglected to harm her, whatsoever.

It was simply the rest of Fell's Church that would need to watch themselves, that night.


	12. Dance

_**DANCE  
**_

_**  
**_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Once more, thank each and every single one of you who are reviewing. You're an amazing bunch and it's really awesome to hear what you have to say. I'll kick this update off by admitting that this is not an 'official' theme, but rather one I dreamed up, myself. This particular short takes place at… Well, somewhere. It could be a party, it could be a school dance, what have you. That specific detail doesn't really come into play. The important part is that our three key players—Elena, Damon, & Matt—are somewhere that dancing is occurring, and Caroline/Matt don't seem to be an item in my universe. Enjoy!

---**  
**

"Did you save a dance for me?"

The voice was unmistakable, familiar to Elena even when her attention was turned entirely elsewhere. It was almost enough to leave her disgusted, the way her heartbeat jumped and lurched unevenly at the dark velveteen sound as he spoke next to her ear. Chills rose up her spine, and she turned from her current conversation to confirm that Damon would truly be standing there when she turned around, not just some figment of a twisted, overactive imagination.

But he was no figment, whatsoever; he was truly real, and happened to be staring at her with impenetrable black eyes, a toothless and mirthless grin on his lips. Perfect and achingly beautiful, as he always was, though here it seemed only to make things — like breathing, and like refusing to smile back — all the more difficult to accomplish.

"Actually," Elena cut him off breezily, willing herself back to the present, "I didn't."

"I don't think… Matt, is it? Matt, will have any problem here, right?" he asked, smooth voice condescending and obviously intimidating where poor, primarily defenseless Matt was concerned. Though she felt sorry for Matt's involvement, she had to be slightly glad that he let some of the macho, male ego crap fall away; he wasn't up against the wit or strength of a mortal man, after all, and Damon was one vampire more eager than hesitant to make a scene.

"Of course not. Thanks, guy. You're a real winner," he supplied in lieu of Matt's own answer, which had been a stuttered 'no'. Encouraged by the silence of both human counterparts, Damon took Elena by the hand, leading her towards the heart of the crowd.

She could have fought his grip, could have attempted to worm her way away from him, but they both knew that in the end, it would do very little good. He wanted her to go with him, and as Stefan had once said, Damon usually got what he wanted. In this case, she'd be leaving the lives of countless humans up in the air simply to avoid dancing with him, and it simply didn't seem worth the risk of him causing a scene or slaughtering fifty of her closest friends in retribution, that evening.

"Black is," he began, dark eyes trailing appreciatively down her body, which was currently encased in a form fitting black sheath dress, "definitely your color."

"You _would_ think so," she accused, putting up no fight as he drew her closer to him in the center of the dance floor, one hand lifting her own in a strangely classic slow dance pose. It didn't fit the tempo of the music, but as usual, Damon looked largely unconcerned with the thoughts or opinions of those around them. She allowed him to begin moving the two of them in sync to some undercurrent in the music, to time that he seemed to be keeping on his own.

She had just begun to get lost in his fathomless black eyes again when she remembered what she had wanted to ask, in the first place — "What do you want, Damon?"

He looked at her in feigned puzzlement. "To dance."

She wished that were true, in some way. She wished that anything in her life, including Damon's wants and ever occurring demands, were so simple. But nothing was, and nothing with him ever seemed likely to be; there was always something alternate going on behind even the simplest of requests, the smallest of statements from him.

"Fine. We're dancing," she pointed out, impatiently. "What else?"

"Would you _relax_?" he scolded her edgily, rolling his dark eyes. He spun Elena in a small circle, dipping her low and speaking to her at that same angle. "That's all I'm after, tonight. You relax, we dance. No deep, dark mystery, just a little fun, for hell's sake."

She eyed him, warily.

So very rarely did 'just a little fun' really mean just what it sounded like with Damon, and honestly, she had no reason to trust that it was all he had in mind, this particular time. It seemed innocent enough, dancing, but picking wildflowers could turn torrid where Damon was involved. Still, they were drawing more attention to themselves by standing there paused than they would have had they simply danced and gone about their evening.

"I'm warning you, Damon," she began angrily, narrowing her eyes at him, "If you—"

"_You_ warning _me_? Simply adorable," he complimented her sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he spun her again, moving her along with the tempo he had set for them, clearly a beat within his head rather than from the music blasting just then. "Now shut up, and dance."

Begrudgingly, Elena had to admit that it was not at all difficult to get lost within the confines of whatever it was that Damon was spinning around them. His movements were lithe and graceful, though they seemed to take as little effort or thought for him as breathing or blinking.

She melted into him in a way she was anything but comfortable with, her head finding solace on his shoulder, her eyes falling shut. She wouldn't have lied if he'd asked, she was initially using the experience to remember similar situations that included Stefan in his place, bodies pressed together and bobbing weightlessly to the music. After some time, however, there was too much evidence to the contrary to pretend that it was in fact Stefan's arms she was in; the scent of the body next to hers was that of Damon's signature cologne, the pliable fabric under her hands a soft leather, and the hands that held her close doing so much more forcefully and roughly than ever Stefan would have consented to touching her.

Much to her surprise, and partially to her disgust, she found herself drunk with happiness and calm, losing herself in the realness of the moment. It wasn't until she realized her feelings in the moment that her heart stopped her short, reminding her where she was; in the teeth of the wolf, in the jaws of the lion. She was within the grasp of someone who could and would easily crush her, and all the while, she was lying there, as helpless and as unassuming as a newborn lamb, as calm and trusting as a wide eyed two year old.

What was she _doing_?

She shook the warmth from herself, reassuming her icy position as before, as she felt her sanity entering her bones once more. Standing up slightly straighter, she judged his expression—blank and unsmiling, though his dark eyes did the bulk of that, just then. They were alight with knowing and shine, and Elena could only assume he knew how she was feeling, just moments before.

She cleared her throat, and took a step back, finding herself spun away from him at arm's length.

"Are you having fun, yet?" she asked him the mundane question very timidly, glad for a momentary reprieve from the closeness they'd shared, though she fully anticipated it being a short lived ordeal. It was preferable to the closed quarters intoxication of being pulled tightly against him the way she had been and for that she was grateful.

"Some would call it that, yes," he whispered vaguely as he spun her back into his arms, a whiplash grin on his lips. It disappeared, and he tilted his head, slightly. "And you?"

She turned her head, unable to formulate a coherent response when he was staring at her in that fashion. He knew, and she knew that he did. The blush that crept into her cheeks at the idea of this shared knowledge burned, forcing her gaze further to the edge of her ability, anywhere that wasn't Damon becoming safe ground. She could have sworn she heard his soft, shadowy laughter mocking her, and her eyes snapped up accusingly.

When she looked, however, he'd chosen to make the dramatic exit he so enjoyed making, blending seamlessly into the crowd around them, for all practical purposes, disappearing completely. Her face still burned, and it did so more with a fire of anger as she looked around fruitlessly for her disappearing dance partner, though she gave up doing so as she heard another familiar voice.

"Where'd your boyfriend go?" Matt. Matt, who she'd been dancing with before attaching herself to Damon for… God only knew how long they'd been dancing. She mentally face palmed in embarrassment for having left him that way, and also, in inability to form a response to Matt's question.

"He isn't my… He's... Damon. And he left," she clarified for him icily, knowing Damon was likely still where he could hear her. No need to give him the satisfaction of being incorrectly referred to as _her_ anything, she supposed, more so than he had been already.

Using Damon's presence to forget Stefan was one thing, but using Matt's to get Damon off her mind was entirely wrong. Entirely wrong, and yet, not _too_ poor an idea, just then.

Grabbing Matt's hand, she attempted to smile confidently. "But forget it. Let's dance."


	13. Can You Hear Me?

**  
**_**CAN YOU HEAR ME?**_

**  
AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**You're all so very amazing for reading and reviewing, and in celebration of that, I've got another chapter for you lovelies tonight — I was feeling extra inspired. A wee warning here, though, Damon's not very nice in this one. Not really his fault, the poor dear, but still. This takes place during a time when he is feeding from Elena for reasons unknown, really, seeing as I didn't delve into the 'why', but for argument's sake, we'll say neither of them has really established a 'relationship' out of it all. They're just… Damon and Elena. At any rate, read and review, please! I'm always interested in hearing what you've got to say. Enjoy!

---

"_Stefan._"

That one cursed, disgusting word, more gasped than it was uttered, had effectively shattered everything. The high of the moment—the all out ecstasy and warmth of blood flowing from her veins in nurturing, all the accoutrements of feeding symbiotically—were utterly cast to the ground the moment the word left her lips in that breathy, damned sensual fashion in which it had. It had not been a mere mention of Stefan's existence, the tone and pitch she'd used forcing the name to sound more like a lover's prayer on swollen lips, the undercurrents of her voice undeniable and strong in sensuality. It was a tone which she had never gasped _Damon's_ name in, a fact he was more than keenly aware of as the word processed in his mind.

Suddenly, the safety net which she'd been basking in was ripped from underneath her, as the sense of power and satisfaction in drinking was from him. Whatever the moment had held in store for them was truly gone, and there was little if any chance they'd recapture it, soon after.

Rage flashed in his eyes, a towering flame against an otherwise pitch black background, and something in the situation changed drastically. The feeding became more frenzied, less precise and careful as to give her the maximum enjoyment a human could accomplish in that situation. No, that was a sensation reserved for when he had believed what he had seen, which was that she was utterly and wholly drenched in nothing but his presence. Whether it was a hedonistic or arrogant assumption, he had seen and felt the pleasure he gave her when he bled her. He knew how thoroughly she enjoyed the experience, how immersed in him she typically was. All she could see, all she could heart, all she could feel, taste, think, _be_… Everything was Damon.

Until that night.

Obviously, her body had been the only think under his careful ministrations that evening, as her mind had clearly gone elsewhere. Her heart had taken a lapse into the past, into the arms of his pathetic, worthless excuse for a brother, where his name was whispered an unholy amount of times in that same wretched, damnable tone. Jealousy did not begin to encompass the black wave that overtook him, his sudden and irresistible impulse to make her _hurt_ by any and all means.

And oh, yes, _he_ would truly do it. It was one of the dividing factors in the Salvatore brother's comparisons; while Stefan had sworn truthfully to never hurt Elena, Damon had taken no such vow. Nor would he, because unlike Stefan, he would have little qualms inflicting the pain upon her that she seemed so naive and blindly willing to give to everyone else around her. It was the way nature worked, to have the smaller, more subservient creature understanding its own place, and reaping the consequences when it made the choice to step outside those bounds, as she had.

Sinking his teeth in deeper, his dark eyes were no longer lidded. He was no more a slave to the ecstasy of Elena's blood, no longer any more engrossed in her than she had apparently been in him. It was highly unlikely Stefan was even capable of showing her such pleasure in being fed off of the way Damon had shown her, and it was equally unlikely Stefan would ever have dreamed of showing her pain as great as what Damon was every bit prepared to, just then. She would not confuse him for Stefan ever again in her pathetic human life, regardless of how vivid a fantasy was carrying on behind her eyelids. He would be sure of this.

She began to struggle, and he made no effort to calm her. The more she struggled, the more it would hurt, and Elena was aware of this, too. His teeth sunk even more deeply into her soft, supple flesh, hitting a nerve and causing her to jolt. The more she moved, the more deeply ensnared his teeth would become, and soon, every millimeter of motion would feel like the pricks of barbed wire in her flesh. There was no reason for him to calm the swelling of his anger, now; it was entirely too late to revert to the mildly sensuous feeding mode they had shared, before. In place of the Damon who had gently bitten, who had drank from her in such a way as to assure her absolute bliss, was a hungry predator, fueled by a thirst for something that rivaled the taste of blood…

_Revenge_.

Her blood was a steady stream of warm, thick liquid down his awaiting throat. The fount was only encouraged by how deeply he'd bitten, not deterred in the least by her muffled cries. If she managed to survive his rage, she would wear evidence of the encounter in the form of a bruise for quite some time to come, though it was equally likely that Damon truly could kill her in that moment. His mindset was radical, the monstrosity inside him, more deep and dark and deplorable than anything Elena had ever glimpsed in him before, was ruling him, now.

The shape of her thoughts was dizzy, panicked. Good. It was working, then. At that moment, she was the rabbit between the jaws of the wolf, thrashing and currently wondering what she had done to provoke him. It only served to enrage him further that she didn't know what had happened, didn't realize that he wanted her complete and undivided absolute devotion and attention. He wanted to be all that she saw, all that she knew, all that she could bare to comprehend about the world around her. He wanted her to be crushed and useless without him. He wanted her to admire the power he held over his brother and over her, over everyone.

He wanted _her_ for his own, not for sharing with memories and thoughts of someone to weak to claim his destiny, someone too shallow and vapid to understand the creature that she was, the creature that she could become. More than wanting this, he outright refused to be denied it. He had no other tools to assure himself that she would be his other than the fangs currently buried to the hilt in the thick, rolling vein in her wrist. He had no way to secure what he wanted other than to crush it if it opposed him, the way he had been dealt with and the way he had been dealing with things for the whole of his human and vampire life. How else was he to adhere her to himself, to make for damned certain she knew the depth of possessiveness he felt towards her?

It paid off in the almost silent sound that filled his senses, next.

"Damon," she whispered, a complete turnaround from her last utterance. Her voice was soft and faint, compelling even in its feathering. Instead of oozing sexuality and sensual grace, however, it merely begged in pleading tones of groveling. It was a satisfying outcome, but nevertheless, it was not the one that he had been seeking. He had wanted to hear his name on her lips in the breathless, love emblazoned tones she had called Stefan's. He had wanted to be whatever it was that she so obviously needed in Stefan's memory, and yet, he had been the opposite.

He had been cruel, been loathing and jealous. He had been petulant and childish, had been selfish and inhumane. He had self admittedly been all of these things, and yet, he felt not a single solitary drop of remorse over this fact. His only route for keeping her was to crush her into submission, and unfortunately for Elena, he had absolutely zero qualms about doing so, at the moment. His toys belonged to _him_, and if he then saw fit to break them when asked to share, then so be it. It was ultimately her own fault, whatever the outcome may have been.

He only ceased drinking when he felt her energy begin to dim, her grip on his forearms slackening. By this point in time, her skin had paled and her eyes were unfocused; for a split second, he wondered if he had truly killed her. A quick feel of the pulse that beat faintly but steadily behind the sheath of skin at her throat dispelled that worry quickly, and he did not care to revisit it. After all, he had merely been illustrating a point: he was not, nor would he ever be, Stefan. Not the 'likeable' qualities, not the strength, not the power. He would never _be_ Stefan, but he could and would easily outshine him in every capacity. He would not stand for her forgetting it a second time, though it stood to reason that she might remember that particular incident for a long while following it.

Lifting her limp body with ease, he carried her to the small room at the top of the long boardinghouse steps where there lie an empty king sized bed. He shifted her weight effortlessly and pulled back the coverings on her bed, laying her down gently before he arranged her in a comfortable sleep position, or at least, what he had judged as comfortable when seeing her sleep, in the past. She would think back to that evening and remember only the lesson he had been forced to teach her, the hate that had clouded her vision absolutely. She would never remember the tenderness he had shown in placing her in bed, the hurt in his eyes, nor the way he stroked her long, dark hair before retreating from the room, and he realized this in perfect clarity.

It was better for both of them that she wouldn't.


	14. Illusion

_**ILLUSION**_

**  
AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**You guys are seriously the best. I appreciate so much that you're all reading and enjoying the story! The reviews you're leaving are absolutely wonderful, and once more, I'm beyond stoked to hear that my Damon is realistic to his true character. You're all much too kind, and I'm truly very happy to hear that you're excited about the story. I hope you continue to enjoy the future themes I bring you and that you stick with me for this 100 (or maybe more, now…) theme experiment.

That said, 100 themes is a lot of inspiration to come up with. So I was thinking, I'd like to hear your ideas for something that you'd like to see turned into a one shot. Leave 'em with your comment if you're game for giving me some suggestions! I may just take them. :P

---

It was like seeing herself from the outside looking in, observing without living any of it.

She could clearly see herself, face turned upwards towards a opening of sky rimmed by the canopies of nearby trees. Looking forward, it was easier to see that she was in fact standing in the center of a great thicket of woods, the pitch black of dark surrounding her aside from where the moon lit the way; the darkness should have posed some sort of an issue, but Elena couldn't detect a frightful or displeased feeling in her entire body. She felt absolutely at home wherever she was, padding barefoot over the moss covered rocks and damp grass beneath her feet.

She emerged from the thick wall of trees, stepping into a sliver of moonlight that brought to life her entire physical appearance; she was clad in head to toe black, a flowing muslin gown clinging to her slender form, blowing in the breeze. It happened to be the one scrap of adornment that clung to her whatsoever, shoes and all other accessories obviously forsaken, that evening. It was all she needed, however, her natural beauty absolutely alive in the night.

Her long, dark hair flowed freely in wild tendrils down her back, more full and yet more fine than human hair — the same liquid mass that was the shock of dark hair atop Damon's own crown, as she knew it. Her skin was subtly more pale, her dark eyes more wide, more predatory and alert, were felling the obstacle of the night's dimness with ease. In movement, she still possessed the natural fluidity and grace she had always, but now, there was a certain feline quality to her sharp, lithe gate.

And her senses — Oh, _God,_ her senses. She could feel the life energy of every living thing in the forest, large and small. She could smell on the wind all scents for a good distance, including the blood of the animals nearby; a coppery, distasteful beverage but blood nevertheless. She could see for miles around, see as clearly as if the sun were shining plainly, midday. She could hear every movement miles around, able to pick up on everything the doe's hoof beats as it tread lightly over twigs and underbrush to the _whooshing_ of wind beneath the hawk's wings.

She was currently looking for something, however. Something that evaded all of these lethal senses, and suddenly, she stopped — another attempt at sensing. One that came up fruitful.

Someone else was there, and though she didn't know the sensation or the figure by name, she knew she was anticipating this someone. Her eyes darted around wildly until they seemed to find whatever it was they were looking for, and her mouth was in motion, at her next turn.

"I've been waiting," she greeted _him_, full lips parting in a small, reserved smile. Outside the reverie, she could not quite grasp who _he_ was, though it was clear from the voice she'd used to greet him that the person she was speaking to was both male and someone she held a great deal of affection for, as she'd never in her life spoken to a female that way. Truthfully, Elena had never heard her own voice so alight with respect and adoration. If only she could see his face…

"Far be it from me to keep you," purred a familiar voice. With that, Damon stepped out from within the shadows, the last long sideways glances of dark holding to him like ink. Her eyes lit up as he took the same graceful, lithe steps she had, pausing short of her. He reached out and took her hand in his own, the rush of _everything_ Elena felt almost too much for her to stomach. She felt powerful, she felt dark, and at the same time, she had never felt anything more pure. There was a raw electricity buzzing, and though she was unsure where they came from, her instincts managed to handle it in stride.

First and foremost, there was business to attend to.

'_I'm half starved_,' she informed him without speaking aloud, her dark eyes becoming slightly more rimmed in red, veins standing out amongst her pale skin as she felt the true pang that accompanied that statement — a twisting, burning, aching thirst that mistakenly appeared to her as a steep hunger. He looked at her wordlessly and nodded sympathetically, then giving a smile momentarily that revealed the elongation of his canines. She returned the heart shattering smile, her lips parting enough to show new additions to the typical line up of straight, white teeth. Two fangs, curved and sharp like a razor's edge, now replaced the rounded teeth she had always known.

Still, the newness of these teeth did not seem to faze her. Nothing seemed to faze her. She was entirely too tuned in to his mind and her own hunger to do much more than simply await his signal. 'Pins and needles' did not begin to describe the anticipatory ache, the yearning…

All ceased with his command, '_let's go_'.

With that, they were away, and things began to blur. There was a noise that seemed to vibrate too loudly over the images, causing the entire scene to shake as she and Damon ran faster than the speed of sound. The sound began to cancel everything out, and the image of the two of them began to fade until, just like that, it was gone.

It was gone, and suddenly her eyes were not adjusting well to the dark, and that damned noise had chased her senses away hurriedly. Surging up, she took a moment to take stock of her surroundings; she was sitting upright in bed, clad not in the form fitting gown she had been moments before, but in her customary sleep clothes. The forest had turned into the pale walls of her room, the imagined moonlight simply pouring in from the open window. Damon was nowhere to be found, no longer a huge mass on her radar, which had dispersed just as fast.

The entire scene—every sense, every feeling,—had been nothing more than a dream, a dream of what form she could take on, of what her future might have been like, had any of it been real. She should have been intelligent enough to tell fiction from reality, but in that moment in time, she could have _sworn_ she was in reality. But nevertheless, it wasn't. Just short lived fiction.

She sunk back down in the bed with a disappointment so great tears stung her eyes, and an ache in her heart for ever having been disappointed, at all.


	15. Subconscious

_**SUBCONSCIOUS  
**_

_**  
**_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**Thank you all for your kind reviews and for the suggestions! It's wonderful to hear that you're all enjoying the story, and I assure you, I really do read and appreciate each and every single review. The suggestions were especially nice, and there were a few that I found very inspiring. In fact, I'm pleased to bring you the culmination of a little inspiration. A slight progress for our dear Elena and Damon in this little baby, so hopefully you enjoy it! Let me know. :P

_---_

**  
**She remembered the sensation with disturbing clarity, as though she'd felt it every day. It was a feeling that she associated with her parents, with car wrecks, with the absence of mother and father, and yet, it was a feeling that she was now experiencing in the back of some Georgian bar, looking at Damon as another vampire whipped him around the alley, mercilessly.

It was a feeling she knew well under any other circumstance.

It was a feeling that left her gasping for air, her lungs suddenly shrinking with refusal to accommodate the air that she needed, a choking that crept up on her neck like a pair of hands. It was a burning, a searing ripping at the edges, as if someone were ever so neatly unpicking the seams to the piece of you they were cutting away, just one at a time. Each seam was connected with lethal closeness to the heart, and each one left a gaping wound more than a hundred times its own size. It was the unclean, uneven removal of whatever had taken the shape of happiness in Elena, the shredding of a precious memory, the shattering of something that resembled her sense of normalcy, though in this particular case, it had been anything but normal.

It was the pain she was feeling was that of losing someone you loved.

"Please, _don't_. Don't hurt him," she begged, her voice strange and desperate to her own ears. She was begging for something she didn't understand her desire to keep, all the while knowing that if anyone deserved to end Damon's life, it was the brokenhearted creature standing above him at that moment. After all, Damon had begun that war, brutally murdering Lexi in an effort to protect himself and, in a way, Stefan. He deserved whatever punishment was handed down to him, and yet, she found herself wholly unable to stand by and allow that to happen.

"I'm doing you a favor," muttered the vampire with the match, taking a shuddering breath as he struck the head of the match against the striking strip, flame igniting. "He deserves to die. And you… You, what, _love_ him?" he scoffed, shaking his head as if the notion were ridiculous.

She guppied, her mouth searching for words as she scanned from the heartbroken face of the stranger to the vaguely terrified face of Damon, soaked in gasoline and crawling backwards like a frightened animal. He only got so far before a swift kick to the ribs was delivered with a sickening _crack_ that tore through Elena's moment of thought, causing her to shudder and speak.

"Yes," she finally cried, willing to say anything at this point to secure Damon's life. Her throat ached, and her body froze in panicked response to the words she was saying, and yet, she continued, "I love him. So I'm begging you… If you're as good as Lexi was, as she said you were, you'll be the bigger person and let him live. For her, for me, for anyone at all. Just _please_."

He didn't seem particularly moved by Elena's pleading, nor presently aware of Damon's existence. In that moment, she was sure, there was only he and Lexi, the voice of his lover now confined only to his mind. There was something going on behind his eyes, though his physical stance did little to comment whether he was feeling generous with Damon's life or not. Elena held her breath, a sharp inhale that burned as she held the note, her lungs burning with a lack of oxygen, as she waited for some clue. Her mouth was silent, while her mind begged, _please._

Finally, he lifted Damon high into the air, their eyes locking for a long moment as the stranger choked back tears. For a split second, she was absolutely sure it was the end, that he would rip Damon limb from limb, torture the scraps before staking him, all right in front of her. The idea of losing Damon made her question how untrue her answer to the vampire's aforementioned question had been, and just why the pain was indeed _so_ crippling, at the moment. There was no time, no energy left in her to sort through her feelings on the subject, at the moment.

And then, the tension broke.

The vampire hurled Damon into the far wall at the back of the alley with an inhuman cry of anger, not killing him despite the force of the impact. Elena breathed finally, a relieving and utterly pacifying breath of calm, ready to drop to her knees in appreciation, cry, and scream, all at once. All she could manage was, "Thank you."

"It wasn't for _you_," the vampire made clear, voice dripping with contempt and layered with meaning that Elena clearly understood. If not for Lexi and the goodness she had known of her while the elder vampire had been visiting Stefan, she knew that Damon would be dead at that very moment. Her body was still frozen utterly in place, her muscles unable to move in the face of anger and hurt that the vampire was showing her, teeth and tears, bared vulnerability and rage. She didn't have long to process her next move, however, as he was nothing but a blur in the night within seconds, more quickly than she could blink an eye.

"Damon," she cried out, reminding herself where her feet needed to go. Her knees were weak and her legs felt more than just gelatinous, but she managed to get where she needed to go. She knelt next to Damon's crumpled form, laying in a puddle of gasoline just below where he'd been tossed. She turned his limp head towards her, his face twisted in pain, and allowed her tears to finally come to the surface. What was the use in pretending the tension of the moment had not drawn out in her many very human responses?

She smoothed his wet hair out of his face with one hand, drying the dampness on her cheeks with the other. He looked at her with scrutinizing eyes, dark and fathomless even given his pain, and made a sound somewhat caught between a chuckle and a choke, sputtering gasoline as he coughed. Damned foul liquid, it had slipped some rather unpleasant places — the eyes, the mouth, the nose, the throat — in the lovesick vampire's little game. The game he'd almost succeeded in until… Until Elena spoke up, begging and pleading on his behalf, until she said those three little words that had so definitely piqued his interest: 'I love him', all with surprising realism and truth. Very interesting, indeed, that little outburst had been.

She realized as much, as well. She had laid a feeling on the line that she could not decide if she truly felt or just knew she needed to conjure up, at that moment. Either way, a feeling too complex and too heavy for her to process, at the moment. The logical side of her mind warned her that there was no loving Damon, a callous, cruel monster who was the antithesis of Stefan, whom she knew she still loved, in some very important ways. There was no loving a cold blooded killer, no loving someone who was merely hell bent on unearthing a homicidal former lover, hence their trip to Georgia, in the first place.

The less logical portion of her heart reminded her of the pain that had ripped her chest in two when she thought she might lose him, _that of losing someone you loved_, she recalled thinking.

Silence passed for a long time between the two of them before he spoke.

"Let's go home," he said, face devoid of his usually arrogant smirk. He was up and on his feet in a startlingly quick display of healing powers, standing beside her before she realized he was up at all. He silently extended his hand cordially to Elena, who, after a moment's hesitation took it, just this once, without any over analyzing or bouts of questioning and morality. She might blame it on the booze or the shock the next day, but damn it, she'd agreed to step away from her life for a full five minutes, and she intended to maximize their potential by doing whatever felt right.

And that, no matter how it disturbed her, most certainly did feel right.


	16. Dear Diary

_**DEAR DIARY…  
**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**As always, thank you immensely for the reviews! You guys are amazing. As such, here's a semi-fluff chapter for all the fluff lovers out there, probably the fluffiest one I've been able to bring myself to write. Have fun! It isn't my absolute favorite, but I try to satisfy the sweet tooth of my readers, and I think it's pretty cute. :P

_---_

The moment she opened the door, she stifled a scream.

"Dear _Diary_," came a voice, cloaked in the darkness of her room. Despite her familiarity with the tone speaking, Elena jumped a mile, steadying herself against the doorframe. She flicked the light switch to her left and breathed a slightly misplaced sigh of relief when she saw that it was only Damon… Only Damon, stretched out lazily like a lounging cat on her bed, her blue velvet covered diary in one hand. He didn't seem to notice or care about her presence in the room.

He continued to narrate, "I _hate_ Damon. I'm almost positive he is the lowest form of life on this entire planet. To believe that he actually cares about anyone but himself is absolutely…"

"Stop it!" she cried, suddenly able to break the trance where she'd been frozen to the spot, mesmerized at him reading her words. They'd been her private thoughts, written in a moment of anger, no doubt, but private nonetheless. She lunged forward, gripping at the air where the diary was, just seconds prior. Damon deftly maneuvered out of her way.

"Mm-Mm," he chided her lightly, quirking a brow. "Now, Elena, didn't anyone ever tell you, if you don't have anything nice to write, don't leave your diary in such an obvious location?"

She had hardly thought that there would be a need to hide it anywhere, in the first place. Aunt Jenna didn't prod or snoop, and Jeremy was decidedly uninterested in the goings on of his sister's inner thoughts; there had never been a reason to suspect that someone was coming along behind her to thumb through her inane ramblings, until that night.

Her face flushed red, and she pounced for the diary once more. "Please, Damon," she begged.

He didn't listen.

"Ouch," he teased, placing a hand over his heart as he continued to scan the pages, able to read them while holding it just out of her reach. "I'm positively wounded. Oh, and by the way, is purple really your favorite color? I always pegged you as a black, or a red…"

"Damn it, Damon, stop it! That isn't yours to read," she hissed, neglecting to make yet another futile reach for the journal. He would simply move it out of her grasp at the very last second, as he had both times she'd made any kind of effort to take it back.

"But it _is_ about me," he explained, closing the book and using it to emphasize his point. He turned towards her, grinning fully. "Speaking of which, I'm a little flattered. Four, five, maybe six pages about me? Sounds like someone's got a little hint of obsession going on, doesn't it?"

She turned away, feeling a hot blush rise into her cheeks. "None of it was praise, you know."

"So I saw," he replied flatly. "But you know what they say — all publicity is good publicity."

She leveled him a dark gaze, rolling her eyes at the fact that he actually seemed to believe it was better to be mentioned out of anger than not to be mentioned at all. That sort of mentality was befitting of Damon somehow, however, and she found herself stricken with a distinct lack of surprise.

"But that still begs the question," he said, up from the bed and stalking towards her in a blink, one of his displays of Power, "do you _really_ hate me, Elena? I mean, truly, honestly, really…"

"It's none of your business," Elena interrupted, clearly flustered as the heat returned to her cheeks. He was drawing closer to her with that Cheshire grin, approaching her with a constant and steady speed until she felt her back go flush with the wall. Even then, he refused to stop, stepping close enough to her that she could feel his body next to hers.

"Oh? Forgive me, but your opinion of me does seem to be at least a little my business," he corrected her, smirking sarcastically as he spoke. He lifted a hand to brush her long, dark hair into place, his fingertips lingering longer than necessary and streaking hot paths down her already burning cheeks as he pouted playfully. "So, tell me… Do you, in fact, hate me?"

He knew her too well, she realized. He knew that an infiltration of personal space, combined with the intoxicating scent of his skin and his cologne, mixed with the intensity of his eyes as he looked down at her, she was absolutely incapable of formulating a witty and insulting response to his question. Normally, from a safe distance and space of her own, she would have come up with something uniquely cutting to toss in his direction, but he very well knew what he did to her senses. It was the same thing he did to every other human girl's senses, only slightly magnified for what Elena was content to refer to as 'reasons unknown'. Either way, he knew what he was doing.

She opened her mouth to speak, eyes getting utterly distracted on those cheekbones, high and mighty on that beautiful face, lingering down towards those lips. She found herself unable to concentrate, and needless to say, he realized it.

"See? I didn't think so," he purred, raising his eyebrows arrogantly as he answered his own question. In a flash, he was gone, just as quickly as he'd came, leaving Elena to pant a breath against the door, eyes searching wildly for his presence somewhere in the room before she got too relieved for her own good. Seeing him nowhere, she slid down the wall to rest more comfortably on the floor. All in all, she couldn't help feeling a little lack of pride in herself for having given in so easily to his trap, not to mention shame for knowing that she'd dream of him that night with no help from his compulsion, at being left sitting on the floor, a hot head rush boiling her brain, all residual effects from playing Damon's usual little game.

The same damned game he'd won so many times before… and again, that night.


	17. Untouchable

**UNTOUCHABLE**

**  
AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**You guys are unfailingly wonderful and totally make this whole process worthwhile! Life got a little crazy, and time for writing got sparse, but I didn't forget you, and I didn't forget the story. It just took a little while longer than it usually does, but I'm back. It's not a very fluffy chapter, and it's actually very vague as to where Stefan comes into play, but meh, who needs him? Kidding, of course! Anyways, on to the story. It's set after episode 14, 'Fool Me Once', just to give it some framing. Please do continue to review, it's better than chocolate chip cookies. :)

---

Her fingertips trailed lightly over the crumbling brick of the ruined church, jagged concrete rough beneath her touch. It was hauntingly beautiful in its own fashion, but any aesthetic appeal the dilapidated building may have once sparked in Elena's mind had been utterly drowned by the mental onslaught of memory that filled her mind whenever she looked at it. There was no room for more significance in its dissolving structure than the pictures that flooded her brain when standing in the middle of it — Stefan's pained parting goodbye, Damon's broken and twisted face, the mood of thorough and inescapable defeat that pervaded her senses, that night.

It was all she could stomach to make her way half unseeing through the fallen cathedral, as she had several times since that night. She didn't know why it was that she felt a draw to the broken down, ill remembered patch of land; there was certainly nothing tying her to the area now that the embers of their fiery adventure had cooled, all traces of the practically seismic events that took place there washed away, entirely. She could only guess that it was something akin to her frequenting the gravesite of her parents, an attempt to recapture a closeness that was permanently and forever lost, which almost everything had been, that evening. From Grams, to Stefan, to Damon's shot at what he most wanted, each and every one of them had lost what they had considered their reason for living, for being something above the clinical definition of 'alive'.

Or maybe it was something else entirely which drew her, she realized, stepping through the church's fallen archway and into the center of the building. Maybe she was there, hoping to recapture a moment in time, a particular flavor or sensation that had washed over her like baptismal water in that place, even amidst the travesties taking place simultaneously. She closed her eyes for a split second, recalling it — her arms around Damon, unperturbed by Stefan's emerald eyes on them as she comforted him as wholly as she possibly could. There was a connectedness in that action, a confirmation that she was unable to place as having come from any other moment between them, and in the wake of both Salvatores taking their respective leaves of absence, she couldn't help but miss it. She couldn't help missing _him_, rather.

The leaves kicked up around her, swirling in the cold wind and somehow making the place look more eerie than it had before, where as Elena had hardly thought that possible. She tightened her own arms around herself, allowing her mind to wander back to that night, if only briefly. Damon's eyes had not left her mind since, and the feeling of protectiveness she had felt towards him in those few moments they had shared had not left her, in the slightest. More than anything, she merely wanted to see him and prove to herself that he had made it through the fires, that he had survived himself and come out on the other side of his challenge, the same Damon she had always known him to be. To believe these things, she would have to see them for herself.

And to see them for herself, she would merely have to… Blink, apparently.

As though on cue, a form had materialized in front of her very eyes. Tall, lean, and clad in black, it didn't take her long to identify the shape before her as Damon. Of course, by the time her eyes reached the eyes of the figure, she was questioning her earlier diagnosis. Damon looked hungry, and not just in the sense of thirst, which was rare enough on its own; he looked as though he'd been sleepless, worried, and ravaged by what Elena could only presume was the loss of his life's purpose. His dark black eyes lacked the spark that she had grown accustomed to seeing in them, and his mouth bore no trace of a smile. He simply stood there, looking at her with blankness.

"Damon," she breathed, finally able to speak after a momentary lapse of mental process.

He didn't speak, didn't move, or make any attempt to distinguish himself from a living statue in any way. He seemed to be regarding her in some fashion, judging her existence and her reasons for being where she was at the moment, all in a single glance. There was a part of him that truly wanted to destroy her—to rip out her throat and crush her frail human body to dust—simply for looking like _her_. In the first glance, it was difficult to remind his heart and his predatory nature that Elena was not Katherine, was nothing like Katherine, as she'd proved time and time again. But after a moment's consideration, that homicidal urge was almost entirely passed, and he was again purely curious as to what it was she was doing in the abandoned ruins of Fell's Church.

"Why are you here?" he asked her, emotionlessly; asking was much more simple than peering into the depths of her mind, given the lack of human blood he had consumed as of late and the energy it would entail to see for certain her motivations in being there, not to mention his mild fear for what he might possibly see, had he done so. The last thing he needed were surprises.

She opened her mouth to speak, coming up empty. "I don't really know," she confessed.

Silence passed between them easily, their eyes staying locked onto one another's without pause. She was searching for some sound reasoning to give him, and he was awaiting it with confusion almost as great as his curiosity. She had no reason to be back in that place, and he knew it, that much was clear in the slightly suspicious way he narrowed his dark eyes at her.

"How are you, Damon?" she asked, unsure how to phrase the question any less cliché than she had. It was the same thing she was used to hearing, the ignorant chant that acquaintances and friends alike had given her after the death of her parents, the words people said when 'I'm so sorry' seemed even more trite than usual and they were at the limits of their prose-like abilities to comfort or empathize with others. It was the go to question of the weak minded and the soft spoken, though anyone and everyone who asked it already knew the answer. No one asked a perfectly fine individual how they were, and Elena knew it. Still, no one had ever said ice breakers had to be born of an intelligent or thought provoking nature. It was good enough.

"How are _you_, Elena? So good that you're spending your time haunting an abandoned church, clearly," he shot back, more icily and defensively than perhaps even he had meant to. She squirmed both figuratively and literally at the tone he'd taken, dark eyes finding better solace on the ground.

"I get it, my mistake. Stupid question," she amended her blunder, holding her hands up in an act of surrender. She didn't want to encourage another stint of running off, nor did she want to deepen any of the wounds Damon was clearly still nursing. He wasn't made of glass and Elena knew it, but he wasn't quite as diamond hard as he fancied himself to be. He was made of something in the middle, onyx in color, with flecks of light and reason in its hue, but that could cut as quickly and efficiently as surgical steel.

Speaking again in tones of confession, she knew she was leaving herself wide open for whatever sort of incision he wanted to make. Shifting her weight, she looked back up into his dark, almost soulless eyes, nearly flinching at the cold she found there. She forced herself to speak once more.

"I haven't seen you in weeks, Damon. I've been worried," she said, quietly.

"Don't you have _bigger_ things to worry about?" he asked, lifting a brow in a facial expression that made him look rather remarkably like his usual self. "Or am I top of the list, these days?"

She smiled, wryly. If his attempts as being himself weren't so half hearted, she might've jumped for joy in the face of them. His wit was acidic, but not quite acerbic or observant, the colorful tone of his usual quips missing in the bitterness he'd taken on, somehow. And if he truly wanted to know, he had damned near topped her list of clientele where worry was concerned; Bonnie was first and foremost of course, but Damon trailed her soon after. Stefan had made his decisions and cut the ties he had cut, but he was not at risk of being permanently untreatable as Bonnie and Damon were. They were both balancing on the edge of a great fall, teetering between moving on and never moving from their tragedy in a seesaw predicament that really could go either way.

"You don't have to do that," she told him in simplicity and vagueness.

"Do what?" he questioned, frowning at his apparent lack of following in the conversation. She took a few steps closer to him, bridging the gap that had kept her at arm's length and him behind a protective wall of space, until then.

He looked at her, frown deepening at her closeness. It was unusual for her to be so forwardly comfortable with him, and it couldn't have come at a worse time, given his lack of human blood; she smelled nearly irresistible, and true thirst was not something Damon had been acquainted with in many years. He typically glutted himself far past the point of fullness and never allowed himself to dwindle towards the hungry end of the spectrum.

"Pretending that you're fine when you're not," she answered him, voice barely audible to human ears, as she took his unmoving hand into her own. "I'm the expert at it, Damon, and it's useless. You're not fine, you _can't_ be fine. You don't have to pretend it's any different than that."

Her bravery sickened him, somehow. Of course it was different than that! He was a man, a Salvatore, and most importantly, a vampire. He was fortified triple strength with the power of genetics, evolution, and plain and anything but simple supernatural physics. There was absolutely no way she could compare her mortal feelings and experiences to his enough to empathize the way her soft, understanding voice pretended she could.

It was the same bell's tone that Katherine had spoken in, and yet, every word from those soft lips had been a lie. There was no doubt in Damon's mind that Elena's forked tongue could be every bit as conniving, but at the moment, and against his better judgment, he believed that she was being honest in her sympathy.

It was simply a pity that he couldn't accept it any more gracefully than he was going to have to.

"Anything you think you know about me, I've made you know. Anything you think you feel for me, I've made you feel. And any commonalities you think we share, you're sadly mistaken," he told her with a sadistic smile, voice hard and frigidly cold as he wrenched his hand away from hers as though the contact physically hurt him.

"So don't pretend it's any different than that."

And with those cutting — and entirely untrue — final words, he was gone.


End file.
